5)  Beck: Sea Change
Has anyone ever written a more vast, touching, expressive and beautiful, yet melancholy work of art about one torturous topic?  I honestly don’t think so.  This album may not have the sing-songy kind of tunes we’re frequently looking for but that can’t possibly change the fact that it is an amazingly wonderful piece of art in its entirety.  If you haven’t listened to this for a while (or ever) I encourage you to get it out spin it for early 00’s sake.

4)  Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
This album was critically acclaimed and is no surprise to be on this list, and for good reason.  It’s a once-in-a-career kind of album, and not much more needs to be said as it’s already well represented on this blog.

3)  Blitzen Trapper: Furr
As the mysterious “Chris M.” noted about one of his choices, this album was just released this year, so who knows if it will stand the test of time?  I think it will and I think time will show that it deserves to be on this list.  In this period in our own history when many of us may feel slightly disillusioned with what the World (and World leaders) has in store for us, this album manages to express so much of what we’re feeling.  And it does so in a way that eagerly beckons us to join in and sing along.

2)  Ben Folds: Rockin’ the Suburbs
I’ll never forget the day I found out that Ben Folds Five had broken up.  I was working in the kitchen at Taco Bell when one of my coworkers shared the news with me.  I didn’t believe him so I used the kitchen phone (definitely against Taco Bell policy) and called a friend to ask him if he heard the news.  He obviously thought I was messing with him, but we found out later that it was in fact true.  It was the end of an era, and I think he’d agree with me when I say that we felt a little lost and a lot depressed.  About a year later Ben Folds released Rockin’ the Suburbs and I suddenly knew everything was going to be OK again.

1)  Elliott Smith: From a Basement on a Hill
Released posthumously, I initially experienced some angst about including this album on such a lofty list.  Within the Elliott Smith subculture, this album is not nearly as favored as many of his other albums.  People tend to take issue with who was allowed to assemble this album and who was excluded from that process.  And of course many say that this isn’t the album that Elliott would have wanted.  I think that’s true; in fact I think it’s obvious.  For instance, it is well-documented that this was originally slated to be a double album.  But the reality is that Elliott passed on from this world before his project was finished, thus preventing us from ever knowing his exact intent for each song.  This is the album that was completed and despite how close it comes to what Elliott envisioned, it’s a fantastic album for all of the following reasons: musical creativity, superior lyrics, use of melody and harmony, and perhaps most of all for it’s emotional exposition.

The NME got in on the act early. This Sunday the Observer Music Monthly publishes its top 50. So I thought I might as well have a go. I wanted to get mine done first and see how much common ground I’ve got with the OMM seeing as its my favourite music mag. It’s harder than you’d think to select just 50 albums that span 2000-2009. I’ve had to leave out some records I really like. But here we go… Please comment as you feel necessary!

50 – Daft Punk: Discovery.

49 – Bob Dylan: Modern Times.

48 – Camille: Le Fil.

47 – Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.

46 – The Blue Nile: High.

45 – New Order: Get Ready.

44 – Mercury Rev: All Is Dream.

43 – R.E.M.: Accelerate.

42 – Fionn Regan: The End Of History.

41 – The Beatles: Love.

40 – The Avalanches: Since I Met You.

39 – Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour Of Bewilderbeast.

38 – Roots Manuva: Awfully Deep.

37 – Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever ago.

36 – Mark B & Blade: The Unknown.

35 – Coldplay: Parachutes.

34 – Malcolm Middleton: Into The Woods.

33 – Seafood: When Do We Start Fighting…

32 – Doves: The Last Broadcast.

31 – Duke Special: Songs From The Deep Forest.

30 – Morrissey: You Are The Quarry.

29 – Guillemots: Through The Windowpane.

28 – Bruce Springsteen: The Rising.

27 – The Gaslight Anthem: The ‘59 Sound.

26 – Billy Bragg & Wilco: Mermaid Avenue Vol. II

25 – Richard Hawley: Coles Corner.

24 – Fleet Foxes:  Fleet Foxes.

23 – Athlete: Vehicles & Animals.

22 – Spin Doctors: Nice Talking To Me.

21 – Sigur Ros: Takk…

20 – Goldfrapp: Felt Mountain.

19 – Maxïmo Park: A Certain Trigger.

18 – Delirious?: Glo.

17 – The Shins: Wincing The night Away.

16 – Ben Folds: Rockin’ The Suburbs.

15 – Green Day: American Idiot.

14 – Neil Young: Living With War.

13 – Ray Lamontagne: Til The Sun Turns Black.

12 – Death Cab For Cutie: Narrow Stairs.

11 – Idlewild: The Remote Part.

10 – Johnny Cash: American IV: The Man Comes Around

An extraordinary achievement for a man in his final year. Johnny Cash’s last ‘proper’ album has the power to bring me to the edge of tears. I bought it the week he died in 2003 and played it a lot. A mixture of originals and covers, Rick Rubin’s brilliant production means there’s pathos dripping from every track. ‘Hurt’ is one of the songs of the decade which couldn’t even be ruined by that dire Nike advert. When I first heard ‘I Hung My Head’ it stopped me dead in my tracks. Just like most of the rest of this awesome album.

9 - Interpol: Turn On The Bright Lights.

I think there’s a good case to be made for Interpol as the band of the decade. To my shame I’m yet to see them live but their three dark, brooding and melodic albums demand that I get round to it soon. I think their debut is the pick of the bunch. Starting with ‘Untitled’ which takes its cues from the shoegazing bands of the early 90’s, the album goes onto channel the best of My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division and classic Krautrock. I suppose it can be said about all the records in the list but I can’t listen to this album too many times. It sends me to sleep, it wakes me up and generally soundtracks my life.

8 – Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend.

The drums alone deserve some kind of award. Chris Tomson is, for my money, the best drummer in a rock band at the moment. But this isn’t Keith Moon fury, or John Bonham theatrics. He sees the drum kit as a melodic and harmonic instrument. The kit is a lead instrument here and when allied to fantastic songwriting, it’s a winning combination. The African influence if overstated (this isn’t even the noughties’ Graceland, let alone Fela Kuti or Ali Farka Touré). However, the hints of afrobeat are enough to make this stand out from the crowd. Walcott is a great track – but there aren’t any duds here.

7 – Grandaddy: The Sophtware Slump.

This outstanding record is often compared favourably with ‘OK Computer’. Well, I’ll put my cards on the table. There’s only one winner; and it isn’t Radiohead. Grandaddy are impossible to categorise, but this record combines the best bits of alt-country, electronica and post-rock. The audacity of a 9 minute opening track has been matched by many bands. The difference is they’ve not made a song as arresting as ‘He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s The Pilot’. ‘The Crystal Lake’ is among the best songs of the decade while ‘Undreneath The Weeping Willow’ showcases a brilliant knack for melancholy. Released at the start of the decade, very few records have got anywhere near matching Grandaddy’s Magnum Opus.

6 – The Hold Steady: Boys And Girls in America.

‘Best bar band in the world blah… blah… blah’ said the music press. Talk about damning with faint praise. The Hold Steady are one of the greatest bands of the 21st Century, full stop. And though their earlier albums are packed with gems, this breakthrough album sees their manifesto fulfilled. How many bands could start a record quoting Jack Kerouac but never fail to be fun? The sound was compared to classic E Street Band and that’s probably as close as you can get to describing this joyous racket. Craig Finn’s lyrics are always interesting and frequently brilliant. So looking at our checklist we’ve got superb music, superb lyrics and some guys that seem delighted just to be playing rock and roll. It’ll do for me.

5 – Elbow: The Seldom Seen Kid.

I suppose too much has already been written about this album. It’d be easy to include ‘Asleep In The Back’ to prove I’ve liked Elbow since I used to play them on student radio in 2000. But that would miss the point: for once, the awards committees, journalists and hype-merchants got it right. This is an amazing album. There’s not an average track in sight in an hour’s running time. Picking highlights almost seems crazy, but ‘Grounds For Divorce’ and ‘On A Day Like This’ have deservedly grabbed the headlines and soundtracked a million daytime DIY programmes. But some of the less well know tracks contain stunning music and lyrics. When Guy Garvey croons ”We kiss like we invented it” on ‘Mirrorball’ it’s enough to melt your heart.  We await their next move with eager anticipation.

4 - Midlake: The Trials of Van Occupanther.

Take a moderately successful Texan indie band and give them a copy of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’. Stand well back and light the blue touch-paper. Doesn’t sound promising does it? How wrong could we be??? This was THE album of 2006. Inventive harmonies, layered synths and lyrics pining for the antebellum South came together to produce a stunning record. The guitar solo that comes halfway through ‘Head Home’ is one of my favourite musical moments of the decade, but this album contains several contenders for that title. The real genius of ‘…Van Occupanther’ is its ability to keep you on your toes. Just when you think it may slip into mid 70’s FM rock pastiche, the band pulls out a track like ‘Young Bride’ which forces you to admit this is a record which is far more than the sum of its considerable parts.

3 – Damien Rice: O.

David Gray is a perfectly decent singer songwriter. The same can’t be said for the likes of James Morrison and James Blunt. But how any of them came to be spoken of in the same breath as Damien Rice is beyond me. The irishman deserves to be in far better company (Jeff Buckley for example). This debut album was a slow-burning word-of-mouth behemoth that managed to retain artistic dignity while being offered on 2-for-1 deals in Tesco. Its strengths have been repeated endlessly, but any blogger who can’t find room for Lisa Hannigan’s beautiful vocals, the stunning string arrangements or the strange re-working of Silent Night is a fool. If this album has a flaw, I’m yet to find it. I can’t pick one track as a highlight because the others simply look at me reproachfully and say ‘actually we’re all rather lovely’. And they truly are.

2 – My Morning Jacket: It Still Moves.

This album sounds like the best party you’ve ever been to. If you want to label it I suppose it’s alt-country. But what on earth does that matter when the music is as much fun as this? Don’t get the idea this is some kind of comedy record though. Howling vocals, squealing guitars and pounding drums fuse together to create a brilliant racket. ‘One Big Holiday’ has a guitar hook to die for, but this isn’t an album of simple pleasures. The genius of the songs reveals itself slowly. The first time you hear it, it sounds like these are well crafted and edited jams. But like Led Zep at their peak, the tracks are more cunningly moulded than that. Crazy Horse are another reference point and when talking about a rock and roll band there are fewer bigger compliments than that. It’s a long record (71 minutes) but unusually for an album of that length, it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Superb.

1 – Stephen Fretwell: Magpie.

I’m annoyed I couldn’t find a decent picture of this album without the parental advisory sticker on it. Ok, maybe it doesn’t make an ideal present for a toddler, but any parent who’s doing their job properly should be investing in this if their child shows any kind of serious interest in music. It’s as close to a perfect record as its possible to get. At the start of the decade, Scunthorpe’s Stephen Fretwell found himself in Manchester as a promising singer-songwriter. A little while later, he was in a recording studio creating some of the most beautiful music that great city has ever produced. By 2004 it was ready for release. In reality, the Manchester thing is a bit of a red herring. Fretwell owes little to the genius of the Smiths and Joy Division or the more prosaic talents of Oasis. He’s just a good old-fashioned acoustic troubadour. So who are the key influences here? I’d guess Neil Young, Bob Dylan et al. But that doesn’t tell you much about this record’s greatest strength. Fretwell’s gift for melody is astounding. Songs like ‘Emily’, ‘New York’ and ‘Rose’ are beautifully crafted and sung. But there isn’t a track here which leaves you cold. You may know ’Run’ as the Theme of ‘Gavin and Stacey’ but don’t stop there. Investigate it immediately. Buy it and love it. There’s only one album of the decade after all; whatever the Observer says!

“When desperate static beats the silence up, a quiet truth to calm you down… it’s been too late for a long time” – Ben Folds

The Bens EP [2003] <- Download

The Bens foi um projeto paralelo relâmpago que reuniu os xarás Ben Kweller, Ben Lee e Ben Folds. A banda gravou um EP homônimo em 2003, que teve suas 3.500 cópias vendidas durante os nove shows que fizeram juntos na The Bens Rock Over Australia Tour. Sem medo de soar pop, a sonoridade das quatro faixas corresponde às expectativas de uma parceria entre os Bens: baladas ao violão, arranjos de piano, algumas guitarras, refrões grudentos e backing vocals entrosados.

Just Pretend
 Stop!

It was a great year for fine albums, though only one merits to be remembered as a stone cold classic. I’m sorry to omit a number of very good efforts released in 2005, such as those by Brandi Carlile, Iron & Wine, Damien Jurado, Death Cab for Cutie, Maria Taylor, Andrew Bird, Emilíana Torrini, John Frusciante, Colin Hay, Kathleen Edwards, Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators, Kevin Devine, Eels, The Cardigans, John Prine, Kate Earl, Richard Thompson, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Blue Eyed Son, Sarah Bettens, Antony & the Johnsons, Beck, Tristan Prettyman, The Magic Numbers, Hot Hot Heat, Charlie Sexton …

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Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning

On the same day as Conor Oberst and chums released their best album — and one of the decades finest — they also released what I think is their worst, Digital Ash In A Digital Turn. It was wise that they did not take the option of releasing these two entirely distinct albums — one alt.country, the other electronica — as a double album. I’m Wide Awake, which features Emmylou Harris on a couple of tracks, has Oberst in a restrained, though not necessarily tamed, form. The indisciplined excesses from previous albums have been ironed out, but not at the expense of that most essential Oberst quality: the feverish intensity. It certainly is the most consistent Bright Eyes album. Every song here is beautiful, especially First Day Of My Life and We Are Nowhere And It’s Now, on the latter of which Emmylou harmonises.

Lyrically, Oberst is in fine form: tender, resigned, confused, hopeful, angry. When he sings on At The Bottom Of Everything about capital punishment, he rightly hectors: “Into the face of every criminal strapped firmly to a chair, we must stare, we must stare, we must stare.” And on Old Soul Song, about an anti-war protest in New York, has some beautifully poetic lines: “We left before the dust had time to settle, and all the broken glass swept off the avenue. And on the way home held your camera like a bible, just wishing so bad that it held some kind of truth.”
Bright Eyes – Old Soul Song (For The New World Order).mp3
Bright Eyes – We Are Nowhere And It’s Now.mp3

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Richard Hawley – Coles Corner

From the moment the melancholy strings strike up on the album’s opener, the gorgeous title track (featured HERE), this album captivates the listener. A more even effort than 2003’s Lowedges, Hawley tries to capture a mood of 1950s balladeering, drawing from country, pop and rockabilly with a healthy dose of torchsong crooning. One can almost imagine Hotel Room being reworked as a doo wop song. The orchestration is lush, scoring Hawley’s warm baritone beautifully. Besides the title track and the countryish Just Like The Rain, the standout track here is The Ocean (not the most encouraging title, it must be said) which starts off quietly and slowly builds up to a dramatic crescendo. I’d gladly call Coles Corner Hawley’s masterpiece, but he has topped it with this year’s Truelove’s Gutter.
Richard Hawley – The Ocean.mp3

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Jens Lekman – Oh You’re So Silent, Jens

Jens Lekman featured with his debut album in the 2004 list; here he returns with a compilation of single and EP tracks — and Lekman has an extravagant catalogue of EPs, some of which he made available on his site for free downloading a while back. So it is suitable, and doubtless intentional, that the opening track would be called At the Dept. of Forgotten Songs. Lyrically and musically it’s all very quirky, but nowhere as much so as A Sweet Summer’s Night on Hammer Hill, a song that is at once funny and wistful (and which gets the release date of Warren G’s Regulate wrong and fails to credit Nate Dogg), recorded with probably not entirely sober pals who improvise the backing vocals and at the end shout out requests (the woman who requests Black Cab gets her wish on the album). Lekman channels Morrissey and The Byrds on I Saw Her At The Anti-War Demonstration, muses on the use of the F-Word, and forges the punchline to childhood jokes. In a sequence of three songs, Lekman assumes the alter ego Rocky Dennis (the name of the facially deformed character played by Eric Stoltz in the ’80s film Mask), whom he finally bids farewell at the end of the trilogy. It’s a thoroughly likeable collection of songs.
Jens Lekman – I Saw Her At The Anti-War Demonstration.mp3

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Wilco – Kicking Television – Live in Chicago

I’m ambivalent about live albums. Much of the time they are a letdown: the songs don’t sound as good as they did on the studio album, the live atmosphere is not captured and so on. Some live albums work because the artist’s stage presence or audience vibe translates to record. And some live albums work because the performer adds something new to the songs. Kicking Television satisfies at least the latter requirement (I’d argue that the vibe is there, too). Take Misunderstood. A weedy, proto-emo number on 1996’s Being There, here it’s a dramatic monster — I’m among those who love the repeated “Nothing”s. There’s humour as well. Following the mid-tempo Wishful Thinking, Tweedy announces, laughingly: “Let’s get this party started…with some mid-tempo rock”. True to his word, the band eases into the mid-tempo Jesus etc. With the great Nels Cline in the line-up and Tweedy having polished his guitar work, there’s much to be had by way of axemanship, most notably on At Least That’s What You Said.
Wilco – Misunderstood.mp3

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Hello Saferide – Introducing…Hello Saferide

Like fellow Swede Jens Lekman, who gets a namecheck in the wonderful The Quiz on Hello Saferide’s 2006 EP, Annika Norlin (for she is Hello Saferide) benefits from a quirky sense of humour, an attractive Swedish accent and the fact that English is not her first language. The latter is not a handicap as she manoeuvres her way around conventions to create novel lyrical ideas that are often cute but never twee. Norlin’s mind is fascinating: expressing her affection for a friend, she wishes they were lesbians; she wishes her boyfriend illness so that she can take care of her “teddy bear on heroin”; getting in touch again with an old pen pal, she admits to having told lies; as a high school stalker in the very funny song of the same name she breaks into the dentist’s office so that the object of her desire won’t need braces and then has coffee with his mother. The upbeat tunes are catchy, and the slow numbers are saved by almost invariably great lyrics and Norlin’s lovely, vulnerable voice.
Hello Saferide – Highschool Stalker.mp3
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Neil Diamond – 12 Songs

God bless Rick Rubin. Having re-established Johnny Cash as relevant artist, he resurrected Neil Diamond, redeeming him from the lame-jacketed crooner reputation. The title 12 Songs became a misnomer with the belated introduction of two bonus tracks (a rip-off, surely it’s the initial purchasers of an album who deserve a bonus), one an alternative, upbeat version of Delirious Love, a song featuring Brian Wilson that appears in more muted form among the original dozen tracks.. That song is the closest Diamond comes to his late ’60s pomp, the bonus track’s arrangement in particular. Most of the album is reflective, pensive and acoustic. It is beautiful. And it’s tempting to give Rubin all the credit. That would be unfair to Diamond, who wrote the songs and for whom the acoustic arrangement is not foreign, as fans of his ’60s albums will know. More than equipping Diamond with a new sound, Rubin harnessed the man’s strength and, perhaps more importantly, by association made him, like Cash, relevant again.
Neil Diamond – Save Me A Saturday Night.mp3

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Common – Be

I can think of very few albums on which the three closing tracks may be the set’s best. Ziggy Stardust comes to mind as a contender (though its best song, Starman, is on Side 1). This is certainly the case here. Modern hip hop, especially the leering misogyny and swaggering materialism expressed by dentally adventurous people in whose company I would not want to spend a minute, leaves me largely cold. Kanye West’s album of the same year had its moments, but I never feel prompted to play it. West did, however, produce most of Common’s album, which is good, and appears on many of the tracks, which is not so good when he makes those idiotic high-pitched noises. This certainly is not a hip hop album that’s representative of the contemporary genre. As much of Common’s work, it is thoughtful and socially conscious. It draws as much from Public Enemy as it does from the great era of politically aware black music, the early to mid-1970s. There is more than a hint of Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron on Be, and the Last Poets even appear on the album, as does John Legend, one of the few current non-nasal R&B crooners whose music is rooted in the ’70s soul scene (slightly unexpectedly, John Mayer also pops up). Common, in short, is the Marvin Gaye of hip hop.
Common – It’s Your World (Part 1 & 2).mp3

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Josh Rouse – Nashville

On his fifth album, the Nebraskan Rouse said goodbye to his temporary domicile of Nashville before moving to Spain. Where his previous album, 1972, sought to capture the vibe of the year of the title, on Nashville Rouse revisits 1980s indie pop through a country lense. It’s cheerful, catchy stuff for a warm summer’s evening (even if one track is called Winter In The Hamptons), admirably coming in at under 40 minutes, like LPs used to. The lyrics aren’t very memorable here; some are decidedly pedestrian. The album’s most powerful song, Sad Eyes, is also its least jovial. It starts slowly as Rouse observes a woman’s melancholy and builds up to a, erm, rousing climax as he offers encouragement. Alas, it’s followed by the set’s one clunker, the rocker Why Won’t You Tell Me What.
Josh Rouse – Sad Eyes.mp3

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Ben Folds – Songs For Silverman

Ah, the album the hardcore Foldsians love to hate. Granted, there’s some forgettable guff on here. Much as I love Ben Folds, I would not be able to tell you a thing about Time or Sentimental Guy. And, as I’m getting all my irritations with Silverman off the chest, the tribute to Elliott Smith, Late, has some really poor lyrics. But then there is the vintage Folds stuff. Bastard, ostensibly about young Republicans in old clothes, packs a decent groove. Give Judy My Notice has a great West Coast rock vibe. You To Thank has a superb piano break, and the break-up songs, Trusted (“She’s gonna be pissed when she wakes up for terrible things I did to her in her dreams”) and Landed (“Down comes the reign of the telephone czar”), are among the best work Folds has done, musically and lyrically. And having just listened to Time and Sentimental Guy for the purpose of this project, well, they are not bad songs.
Ben Folds – You To Thank.mp3

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Rosie Thomas – If These Songs Could Be Held

The title If These Songs Could Be Held seems apt; there is fragility in Rosie Thomas’ songs, emphasised by her beautiful, sad voice. You want to hold her and the songs. Her family and friends help out again, with Ed Harcourt duetting on the unpretentious cover of Let It Be Me (featured in The Originals Vol. 24). The arrangements are more complex than a casual listen would suggest. Hear the almost martial bass drum in the opener Since You’ve Been Gone. The lyrics range from perceptive introspection to sophomore poetry, but expressed through the medium of Rosie’s gorgeous voice, even the more inopportune words are entirely forgivable.
Rosie Thomas – If These Songs Could Be Held.mp3

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More Albums of the Year

I’m known for going though some serious phases, but in my defense, I grew a lot as a person while trying out different interests. There are still boxes of plastic, fake food in the basement from when I was eight and obsessed with becoming a chef. Some might even say that this desire to blog is just another to add to the incredibly long list of phases I’ve gone through over the years (I really hope not). Some “phases” do indeed stick though, so here’s hoping Under the Microscope is one of them.

MY CURRENT OBSESSIONS:

1. Gossip Girl

I’m nuts about this show. Whenever Monday night rolls around, homework is ignored and all responsibilities vanish during that one hour of bliss. The clothing alone would keep me coming back week after week, but I just can’t get enough of Chuck and Blair.

2. The Selby

A post on Binky’s Alternate Reality introduced me to this website with pictures of “interesting people in their creative spaces” and now I’m hooked. For as long as I can remember I’ve been collecting materials and ideas for when I get my own personal space, and this website has so many wonderful ideas I can take and make my own.

3. How-to videos

If you don’t know, someone else does. YouTube has become my best friend lately as I’ve gotten more and more obsessed with learning how to do pretty much anything. Thanks to YouTube’s vast how-to library, I now know how to tie a tie, cook lasagna, and draw cartoons.

4. Audlogs

The boyfriend and I recently started recording our drives to school, adventures, etc. for no particular reason. I’m not really sure if anyone else does this, but it’s similar to vlogs (minus the video part of course). There has been some hilarious audio recordings created that’ll be interesting to listen to a few years from now. We have yet to decide what we are going to do with these recordings, but the boyfriend and I are obsessed with making them.

5. Ben Folds feat. Regina Spektor – “You Don’t Know Me”

 I used this song in my “Life’s Soundtrack” post, and to my dismay I’ve become even more obsessed with it since then (One guess what song I’m listening to right now). This song is amazing for no particular reason. It just is. It’s one of those songs that you can explain why you love it, but you know that you’re different now than you were before you heard it. Listen to it. Seriously.

6. WordPress

What I should write next is all I can think about (I’m thinking about it now even). Forget doing that silly history homework, there’s a more pressing matter at hand whether to create another “Appearances” or “Art Forms” post. I’ve become addicted to this blog, and I’m totally ok with it.

There are numerous others, but these are clearly leading the pack to attract the bulk of my attention.

“It’s fun to put in the odd moment of vocal insanity.”

I can’t say I’ve ever easily pinned down who Kate Miller-Heidke is. Her demeanour suggests coy, gentle lady of the house, ready to throw a tea party. Some video clips, like Can’t Shake It, reveal her as a Gwen Stefani hopeful, teetering towards hysteria with colour changing black head remover still in place. And when I speak with Kate I feel I could just as easily be sharing a pint with an old uni friend.

Despite her approachable down-to-earth friendliness, Kate has good reason to be a snooty cow. After winning multiple ARIAs, an APRA award, gaining international recognition and seeing her album Curiouser go platinum last month, Kate is about to embark on a tour with Ben Folds. Kate informs me that this entails, “singing the Regina Spektor part of You Don’t Know Me,” adding, “slightly shitting my pants about that.”

She needn’t be nervous though. It’s not the first time she has sung with a big wig. Kate also tells me, “last year we opened for Cyndi Lauper and I watched her perform from the side. I wiped a tear from my eye after she sang True Colors. Then she came over and said ‘hey Kate, do you wanna come up and sing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun with me?’ It was unforgettable.” Um, yeah! Singing with the great squinty one is a solid peak point!

Surely Kate is still in plateau mode, managing to keep herself (and her husband and bandmate, Keir Nuttall) busy working on a new album and a lot of “to-ing and fro-ing. We just got back from Nepal, where we did a gig for MTV Asia, to raise awareness about human trafficking over there.” Lady of the house, bonkers AND humanitarian?! Is this collection of personalities why her music has changed so much over the years? The last album certainly shares a bit more of her classical training, what with the crazy vocals and all. But it’s okay; Kate hasn’t lost the plot, clarifying, “I come from a folk music background and I think the first EP and Little Eve reflect that. Whereas Curiouser was much more about exploring the joys of expansive, experimental pop music… I think in the end a song has to come down to the lyrics and melody. But it’s kind of fun to put in the odd moment of vocal insanity.”

Since Kate is about to tour for the release of the single The Last Day on Earth, I thought I would ask who it is about (presumably not Didge from Neighbours) but I am told, “that song was initially inspired by a recurring dream about the apocalypse; it’s a love song during the apocalypse.” Quite the ominous tour then!

Author: Peter Rosewarne

Kate Miller-Heidke – Monster

Let’s face it, last season’s success set some very high expectations for this year’s Boston Bruins.  If they do in fact end up having the type of season that we know they are capable of having, this most recent 4-game home stand (Nov. 5 – Nov. 12) will be looked back at as the point where they started to gain some traction  after a less than thrilling opening 14 games (6-7-1).  The Bruins headed into the opener of this home stand against the Canadiens having suffered back-to-back shutouts on the road to the Rangers and Red Wings, so they were woefully in need of some offense.  They had not scored in six plus periods, they were 0 for their last 20 power plays (and last in the NHL), and were still looking for back to back victories five weeks into the season.  Would they be able to beak some of these less-then-desirable streaks? On top of all this, it was announced that David Krejci  was out indefinitely with the  swine flu. Although this home stand was not a complete success, it was a huge step in the right direction, as the B’s gained six out of a possible eight points (2-0-2), and Bruins fans exclaimed “Finally!” each time the aforementioned streaks were thankfully put behind them.

In the first game, it took 59 minutes against Montreal Canadiens, but the Bruins finally broke their scoring drought of 194:06 as Patrice Bergeron beat Price with 52 seconds remaining in the third period when he popped a goal-mouth rebound in to tie the game at one.  This was the 37th shot of the game for the Bruins, who ended up outshooting the Habs 43-26, but lost in a shootout.  But the Bruins had one monkey  off their back….they had scored a goal….Finally.  Carey Price had a solid game in net for Montreal, but I still think he’s extremely overrated and would be surprised if he plays this well against the Bruins in any of the remaining Bruins/Canadiens games this season. I had to watch this game on DVR because I went to see Ben Folds  at Brandeis. This video is far away, but you can still hear Ben punchin’ the ivories.

It would not get any easier for the Bruins next game, as the Northeast division leading Buffalo Sabres (9-3-1) came to town with arguably the hottest goalie in the NHL in Ryan Miller.  But the Bruins caught a break, as rookie netminder Jhonas Enroth, recalled from Portland of the AHL on Wednesday, made his NHL debut between the pipes.   The Bruins (Finally) got a power play goal from March Recchi on a tip-in of a Derek Morris shot, then another PP goal from Zdeno Chara to gain a 2-0 edge after the first period.  These were the B’s first power play goals in seven games, and Chara’s goal was also his first of the season.  The monkeys were flying  off the Bruins backs now.   The first period also featured a good Thornton/Montador fight, with a clear decision being awarded to Shawn Thornton over former Bruins-stiff and current Sabres-stiff Steve Montador in this bout.  This was also the first Garden appearance for Sabres’ rookie defenseman  Tyler Myers, who at 6′ 8″ is an impressively agile player and looks to be a star of the future for the Sabres.  He had a beautiful assist on the Sabres’ second goal. But the Bruins were finally playing with the kind of confidence we had become accustomed to last season, and Byron Bitz made it 3-0 early in the second stanza, showing again why the Bruins fourth line is the best in the league.  Sure, there are no all-stars amongst the fourth line of Bitz, Steve Begin and Shawn Thornton; but they continually shut down the other teams top lines and frustrate the opposition by keeping the play 180 feet away from the Bruins’ goal.  With 1:29 remaining in the second, Bergeron fed Marco Sturm for a 4-1 Bruins lead.  This was Sturm’s first goal in 12 games, and the Bruins will need him to get back on track if they want to replace the offense that went to Toronto this past offseason in the form of Phil Kessel.  Serendipitously, this was also the night that Kessel scored his first goal of the season for the Maple Leafs, as he returned three weeks ahead of schedule. This game also featured solid penalty-killing by the B’s, and that is one aspect of their game that has been solid all season.  The Blake Wheeler/Michael Ryder/Vladmir Sobotka line is also developing some nice chemistry, and that line produced several solid scoring chances. The 4-2 Bruins victory also featured a good bout between Thornton and Paul Gaustad, as well as more solid play from emerging defenseman Mark (don’t call me ‘Martha’) Stuart.

The Bruins had failed in their first six chances to win back-to-back games, and they now had a seventh chance to finally accomplish this against the Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.  The Penguins came to Boston on 11/10/09 with several key players out, with Evgeni Malkin  being the most notable. Sidney Crosby was in the lineup, but entered the game with zero points in his last four games, the longest such drought of his career…and it would stretch to five games after tonight.  The Bruins were also still undermanned (Savard, Lucic still out), but were somewhat buoyed by the return of David Krejci from the  swine flu. There was a familiar name on the back of #12 for the Penguins, as Chris Bourque  (yes, son of Bruins legend Ray Bourque) was picked up off waivers by Pittsburgh from Washington earlier this season.  The first period featured good sustained action, but the game remained scoreless going into the second period.  Matt Hunwick put the Bruins up 1-0 early in the second period, scoring a goal that slipped under the crossbar and eluded the on-ice officials.  After continued play of 1:20, there was finally a stoppage of play, the tape was reviewed, and the B’s had a 1-0 lead. In the third period, Derek Morris, who is showing himself to be a solid free-agent signing, blocked a shot that led directly to a breakaway goal by Daniel Paille.  It was Paille’s first goal as a Bruin, and Mark Recchi’s assist was the 900th of his career (in 1,507 career games).  Tim Thomas was solid when needed, and made several big saves to earn his second shutout of the season.  Pittsburgh’s Marc Andre-Fleury made the save of the game on David Krejci late in the third period to keep the Penguins within two goals at 2-0. The impressive win by the Bruins was capped off by a 180-foot open-net goal by Patrice Bergeron that took all the right bounces…..if this was  Plinko, it would have been a $10,000 shot.  So the Bruins had beaten the Sabres and Penguins for their first back-to-back wins of the season….FINALLY.

The last game of the four game home stand welcomed Tomas Vokoun and the Florida Panthers to the Garden.  The Bruins always seem to have problems with Florida at home, and on this night Vokoun would make sure that those problems continued.  Tim Thomas was almost as good, and this save in the first was definitely his best of the game, if not the season.  But Vokoun stymied the Bruins at every turn, and even Thomas’ second straight shutout (and third of the season) did not ensure two points for the Bruins, as Florida won in a shootout, 1-0.  Stat of the game:  the Bruins outshot Florida 19-1 in the second period (40-23 overall).  There was one bout worth noting, as Shawn Thornton scored a decision with a take-down of Bryan Allen in the second period.  There are going to be a couple of games over the course of the 82-game season where you have to tip your hat to the opposing goalie, and this was one of them.  The Bruins inefficiency in shootouts is somewhat troubling, but these stats show that there are some teams that have fared worse in shootouts since the NHL adopted this game-deciding format in the 2005-2006 season.  So three consecutive wins was not in the cards, but the Bruins had succeeded in getting points in all four games in this home stand (2-0-2).

Jack Edwards  continues to make me turn down the NESN audio and turn the radio to 98.5 FM for the game play-by-play, as he remains an annoying clown  in the TV booth.  Gems such as “(Frolik) slams into (Mark) Stuart and he’s an executive desktoy!” make me wonder what is more important to him….calling the game, or making sure he squeezes in as many useless, meaningless non-sequitor soundbites as possible.  He also called Vokoun “Brodeur” during the OT period.  Even Andy Brickley, a talented color commentator who also works on VERSUS national broadcasts, seems to be tiring of Edwards’ shtick.  I never thought I would say this, but I miss  Dale Arnold.

The Bruins (8-7-3) head into Pittsburgh for Saturday’s (11/14/09) game looking to get back to their winning ways after the aggravating shutout at the hands of the Tomas Vokoun.  With Evgeni Malkin  back in the lineup for the Penguins, and Tuesday’s 3-0 shutout at the hands of the B’s still fresh on their minds, the Bruins have their work cut out for them.  But the Bruins’ play has been trending up  as of late, and with the imminent returns of Milan Lucic (possibly 11/19 or 11/20) and Marc Savard (should begin skating next week), Bruins fans have reason to believe that trend will continue.

Inte ett så bra klipp, men en fantastisk låt där Lisa Nowak, astronauten som fick en smärre flipp, har en stor del i handlingen. Ben Folds är en nygammal idol, väl värd att lyssna på!

Like Vines by The Hush Sound

It’s not often a band’s name is such a blatant lie, but the Hush Sound are anything but quiet.
Smashing piano keys with the force of an angry Ben Folds and banging drums like Animal from the Muppets, this quartet from Illinois don’t really have a low-decibel moment.
Especially during their 2006 album Like Vines, which is like being musically punched in the face, but instead of it hurting, it makes you start dancing.
The album explodes to life with We Intertwined, a song about love with band founders Greta Salpeter and Bob Morris’s lyrics embracing each other like the characters in the song.
The two, who met in High School, share lead vocals throughout the album and switch over with effortless ease, like tag-team wrestlers.
Sweet Tangerine and Lions Roar are other stand-out tracks on the album, crashing into your ears and sounding like musical numbers, backed with big bang-style orchestral bigness.
Even during the so-called softer songs, the strength of the instruments and voices makes it anything but background-music.
Maybe it’s the strength of Salpeter and Morris’s voices, maybe it’s the array of instruments used to bolster each song – an accordian here, a flute there – maybe it’s just good production skills. Whatever is it, it works.
I feel like I’m listening to the soundtrack to a west end play, Salpeter and Morris dueting with pitch-perfect voices. In fact, The Hush Sound – The Musical could work. They already have the songs, just scribble some script about Salpeter and Morris being star-crossed lovers or something and you have a play on your hands.
My friend Kirstine sold me the album off the back of We Intertwined but warned me “the rest of the album isn’t really like it”. She lied.
One slight criticism: Many of the songs are quite samey. I found myself humming one of the songs the other day and going straight into the chorus of a different song.
Sounding strangely like Ok Go, although sadly lacking the treadmill skiing skills to produce anything even close to a music video to match the Chicago-based rockers, The Hush Sound still rock my world. Check ‘em out.

N.B. The band have a newer album out – 2008’s Goodbye Blues. I have it somewhere and have only spun it a few times, but from memory it rocks also. Will review it soon.

WORD

actuate [ak-choo-eyt] v. 1. to incite or move to action; impel; motivate: actuated by selfish motives 2. to put into action; start a process; turn on: to actuate a machine

BIRTHDAY

Benjamin Banneker (1731), Elijah P. Lovejoy (1802), Ed Wynn (1886), Hedy Lamarr (1914), Sargent Shriver (1915), Choi Hong Hi (1918), Spiro Agnew (1918), Dorothy Dandridge (1923), Carl Sagan (1934), Lou Ferrigno (1951), Sandra “Pepa” Denton (1964), Scarface (1970), David Duval (1971), Big Punisher (1971), Nick Lachey (1973), Joe C. (1974), Sisqó (1978)

STANDPOINT

Man. It’s been a while so I’ve got copious notes on shit I need to unleash on. Where to start?

In the spirit of getting myself readjusted to this blog at the proper rate, I’ll only offer this today.

A few weeks ago, comedian Louis CK went on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and, in a little over four minutes, explained the root of what’s wrong with most everything.

Watch the video. Think to yourself, “Is he talking about me?”

If you think he may be describing you, the answer is probably, “Yes.”

If you think he is definitely not describing you, the answer is assuredly, “Yes.”

Now, I know it is just a guy sitting on a couch, venting in an attempt to entertain, but he’s summed it up, people. Whether you realize it or not.

The Age of Entitlement is most definitely upon us. It is evident in absolutely everything everyone of us thinks, says and does every minute of every day.

“Everything is so amazing and no one is happy.” True Story.

QUOTATION

You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. → Jim Bouton

TUNE

All of us, at one point or another in our lives, will come to a place that truly sucks. It’s inevitable. Some songs can lessen the pain, if you truly want it to. “Wash Away (Reprise)” by Joe Purdy has, from time to time, been one of those songs for me. Use it at your own discretion. And enjoy.

GALLIMAUFRY

→ For those of you on Facebook who are among the group graced enough to call themselves childless, you’ll probably get a kick out STFU, Parents. Most of you parents will probably like it, too. After all, not all of you are bat-shit crazy. But there are more than a few/dozen of you.

→ To the girl at the bar a few nights back who told me Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman was “awful,” I’m happy to report you’re wrong. Which I pretty much assumed was the case after your 15-minute tirade detailing the Elliott Smith-Ben Folds conspiracy I’m sure only exists in the recesses of the crazy-ass world in your head.  

→ Lastly, I’d like to thank all of you who’ve sent me emails, asking me to restart this blog. I really appreciate it. I sincerely missed doing it. Also, if this post appears clumsy, I promise you, I’ll get back in the swing of it. After the long break, it was difficult deciding what to include. I’ll work it out. Come back tomorrow for some more.

時々、あっと驚くような表現に出会うと、それがより高度なテクニカルなエクリチュールを含むものがあったりすると、大げさな言い方かもしれませんが、自分の内部でインスピレーションが刺激される音がします。わたしたちは幼いときから聴くという行為の積み重ねのなかから音楽の基礎をアキュムレートし、神聖な心のなかにある創造の耕地を豊かにしていると考えます。いくら学校で理論や技術を学んでもそれだけではクリエーターにはなれない。アグレッシブなエクスプレッションとエクスペリメント。人間の創造性は宇宙のように果てしがなく、新しい体験をしたいと渇望するデザイアも果てしがない。

＜Vier Minuten : ４分間のピアニスト＞
Traude Krueger (Bleibtreu) is working as a piano teacher in a women’s prison. While selecting new students, she meets Jenny Von Loeben (Herzsprung). When she tells her she can’t follow any lessons because her hands are too rough, Jenny becomes enraged and almost beats the present prison guard, Mütze (Pippig), who is also one of Krueger’s students, to death. After doing so, while the other guards are rushing in, she starts playing the piano. Krueger listens from the hallway and, impressed by her talent, later offers Jenny to give her lessons after all. She does however tell Jenny never to play ‘that kind of nigger-music’ again.
It is revealed that Jenny’s adoptive father wanted to turn her into a Mozart-like child prodigy when she was young but when she resisted to going to further contests, he started raping her. She is still incredibly talented though and Krueger plans to start playing in competitions again. While practicing, some other inmates become increasingly jealous of Jenny, who doesn’t seem to get punished for beating up the guard. Some of the other prison personnel also heavily oppose giving her the freedom to play the piano. However, the director sees in this a perfect opportunity to get some positive media attention for his prison, which does ensue.
Against all odds, Jenny manages to reach the finals of a grand piano-concours for players of maximum 21 years of age. During events preceding the concours, she was transferred by Mütze to the cell of her rival inmates. One night, they strap her hands to the bed with some cloth and set them on fire. In a furious reaction, Jenny severely wounds one of the culprits. This leads to her being forbidden to enter the concours. Krueger however learns that Mütze deliberately turned a blind eye so to let Jenny get burned and plays on his conscience. He finally decides to aid her in letting Jenny escape from prison to go play at the concours.
When, after her escape, Krueger and Jenny arrive at Krueger’s apartment to get themselves dressed, Jenny learns that Kruger has had contact with her adoptive father. Thinking he arranged all of it, and that Krueger was just being bribed into teaching her, she falls into a fury once more. It is now that Krueger tells her about her own past, how she lost her great love, another women, during the second world war because she was a communist, and how she also taught her to play the piano.
Krueger is able to convince Jenny to play at the concours where, because the police have come to take her back to jail, she has only four minutes to convince the crowd. She diverts from the original plan of playing a piece of Schumann by playing a unique piece of her beloved “negro-music”. When she is finished, the crowd erupts in a standing ovation.

映画＜４分間のピアニスト＞は、ラストの常識を覆すような感動的なピアノ演奏を撮るためにストーリーを作り上げたようにさえ思えますが、この映画を見てベン・フォールズを思い浮かべた人は、わたしだけではないでしょう。（師である老女はヒロインの自由で強靭な生命力に救われ、忌まわしい過去から解放されたものと解釈しました）
わたしはＢＦのライヴは見たことはありませんが、ピアノという楽器を知り尽くした人のパフォーマンスは、聴く者に思い込みや今までの知識をすべてゼロに、スタート地点に戻すのだと教えてくれます。自分を束縛しているものは自分自身に他ならない。もっとカラを脱ぎ捨て自由であるべきだと知るのです。
９４年といえば、グランジの迷える子羊、カート・コベインが裸の王様のように孤独のなかで死んでいった象徴的な事件がありました。
閉塞感に苛立ちを隠せなかったオルタナティヴに対する鮮やかな解答は、９４年結成のＢＦ５の９５年リリースの１st アルバム＜Ben Folds Five＞に見ることができます。
ピアノを中心としたギターレスの３ピース･バンドは圧倒的にロックしているし、行き詰まったオルタナティヴへのオルタナティヴ的解答として目を見開かされたのでした。

＜Ben Folds Five＞1995 1. Jackson Cannery 2. Philosophy 3. Julianne 4. Where’s Summer B? 5. Alice Childress 6. Underground 7. Sports & Wine 8. Uncle Walter 9. Best Imitation of Myself 10. Video 11. Last Polka 12. Boxing

ベン・フォールズは６６年、ノース・キャロライナに生まれました。９才でピアノを習い始めティーンエイジャーのころにはあらゆる楽器を独学で覚え、マルチ・インストールメンタリストとしての才能を身につけました。９４年にロバート・スレッジ（Ｂ）、ダレン・ジェシー（Ｄ）とＢＦ５を結成。９５年に１st アルバムをリリースします。わたしが聴いたのは３年前のことですが、このアルバムで全く想像の域を越える打楽器ピアノに眠気も吹っ飛ぶような興奮を感じたのでした。全曲ムダなしのクオリティーの高さに圧倒され、１０年以上も前にこんな天才がデヴューしていたなんてウソでしょ？。誰も教えてくれなかったなんてどうしてよと、文句の一つも言いたいところでした。と、いってもそのころはそれほど熱心にロックを聴くということもなかったのですけど。

＜Jackson Cannery＞

＜Philosophy＞

９０年代を代表する１stアルバムは、今聴いても新鮮で、本当に素晴らしい。どの曲もメロディアスで、荒削りの若々しさと音楽哲学に溢れています。ロックでありながらロックという範疇を凌駕しています。 伝統や慣習、決まりごとといったものは人間関係を円滑にするために必要なものでもありますが、芸術分野においてはときとして進化発展を阻害するものになりかねません。歴史を変えた真の芸術家がすべてそうだったように、自由な発想と革新的な思想は柔軟な頭脳と感性の賜物です。

＜The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner＞1999 1. Narcolepsy 2. Don’t Change Your Plans 3. Mess 4. Magic 5. Hospital Song 6. Army 7. Your Redneck Past 8. Your Most Valuable Possession 9. Regrets 10. Jane 11. Lullabye

３rd＜The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner :  ラインホルト・メスナーの肖像＞はストリングスを加え、更にロックの可能性を推し進めた名盤です。全曲が佳曲です。ホーンやストリングスを取り入れたポップソングは新鮮でベンの音楽に対する熱い思いが伝わってきます。ベンは最も苦しんで制作したアルバムと言ってますが、そんな感じはありません。
緻密なアレンジ、ミドルテンポの濃密なサウンドに音楽を聴く醍醐味、イマジネーションが刺激されます。そしてあらゆる束縛にとらわれないという視点から言えば納得がいくものでもあります。

＜Narcolepsy＞

＜Don’t Change Your Plans＞

＜Army＞

＜Lullabye＞

今年２月初めてのベスト盤がリリースになりました。＜Ben Foldes File＞
ここには新曲＜Black Glasses＞が収録されています。アンジェラ・アキとのコラボレーション。そういえばアンジェラもピアノプレイヤーですね。

ＢＦ５は４枚のアルバムをリリースし２０００年に解散。その後ソロとして活躍。
ベン･フォールズはまだ過渡期といってよいでしょう。今度はどんな冒険にチャレンジするのか楽しみに待ちたいと思います。

ランキングに参加しています。
ワンクリックであなたに幸運が訪れますように。

Goodness, wasn’t 2002 a dire year for music? Still, there were some highlights, and doubtless a few gems I missed (as always, I can only include those albums I have and like).
* * *

Johnny Cash – American IV – The Man Comes Around

In 2005, Any Minor Dude had his first guitar lesson. The tutor, a session musician of some repute, asked the 10-year-old what he wanted to play, probably expecting to hear Green Day or Black Eyed Peas. Any Minor Dude responded: “Johnny Cash”. It had nothing to do with my influence; he had seen the wonderful video for Hurt on MTV, and became an instant fan. Soon after, he bought the Highwaymen CD (Cash’s supergroup with Jennings and Kristofferson) and polished up on older Cash music, even buying a live DVD. I suspect that Hurt, which features on The Man Comes Around, may have introduced many young people to the genius of Johnny Cash. It certainly established this album as the best known of the American recordings.

I don’t know whether it is the best of the series. When I hear it, I think it probably is, especially when I consider that this was released only three months before the man’s death, and so stands as a testament (in a prescient bit of sequencing, the traditional ballad Streets Of Laredo, with its theme of death, burial and redemption, closes the set). But when I hear the first or third American albums, I think whichever one I am listening to is the best. American IV has a few songs that did not need to be recorded, such as Personal Jesus and Bridge Over Troubled Water. But then there are those two extraordinary covers, Nine Inch Nail’s Hurt and Sting’s Hung My Head, which Cash entirely appropriates. Those two and the title track eclipse almost anything in this great Rick Rubin-produced series.
Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around.mp3
Johnny Cash – Streets Of Laredo.mp3

.

Rosie Thomas – When We Were Small

Few singers achieve such immediate intimacy with her listeners as Seattle’s Rosie Thomas, whose beautiful, vulnerable voice accompanies sweet acoustic melodies. Lovely though her songs may sound, her lyrics are in turn sardonic, sad and dark. On her debut album, childhood is a running thread, with what seem to be random old family recordings linking tracks. As all her subsequent albums (other than last year’s Christmas album), When We Were Small has a sense of deep yearning for absent contentment, fleeting moment of love to fill in long, lacerating periods of loss felt deeply. If that sounds boring, know that Thomas was signed by Jonathan Poneman of Sub Pop, the record label that made grunge, who had caught Rosie singing during her stand-up comedy gigs (what’s that about sad clowns?). This is an astonishing debut, and Rosie would get even better yet.
Rosie Thomas – Wedding Day.mp3

.

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

My pick of song from this album will alert the Wilco fan which side of the group I prefer: the alt-country Wilco. There’s some of that on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which many seem to regard as a highpoint of ’00s music. Some Wilco purists may hate me for saying it, but my preference resides with this album’s 1999 predecessor, Summerteeth, or the undervalued Sky Blue Sky. On Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Wilco go experimental, with noise distortion and electronic innovations, which ordinarily are not my bag. Then what, the reader is entitled to demand, is Yankee Hotel Foxtrot doing on this list? Well, within the Wilco framework, it’s actually very good, and at times exhilarating as the musical dissonance accompanies the discord in the relationships Tweedy is singing about. It may not be my favourite Wilco album, but I’ll concede that it is the Wilco classic.
Wilco – Jesus, etc.mp3

.

Ben Folds – Ben Folds Live

No artist I like ever comes to play where I live (other than Missy Higgins, whose gig I missed, and Counting Crows, whose tickets I couldn’t afford at the time); only megastars and superannuated irrelevancies fly in to fleece the South African consumer (a largely ignorant group of people who think that Coldplay is on the sharp end of the cutting edge). Happily, I had my fill of great concerts when I lived in London. But if I could invite one artist to tour South Africa, it would be Ben Folds, alone on strength of two DVDs and many bootlegs I have of Folds in concert — and this album.

It seems a strange decision for Folds to have recorded a solo live album only one album after having split the Ben Folds Five. So the tracklisting incorporates old BFF numbers (such as the astonishing Narcolepsy, Army, Best Imitation Of Myself, The Last Polka, Brick, and Song For The Dumped), which lose little through the absence of his rhythm section, and material from the solo debut, 2001’s Rockin’ The Suburbs, plus a rather good cover of Elton John’s Tiny Dancer. The set includes Folds’ two party pieces: directing the audience to provide backing orchestration to the very funny Army (“Well, I thought about the army; Dad said, ‘Son, you’re fucking high”) and spooky harmonies to Not The Same, the song about a friend who climbed up a tree during a party while on an acid trip and had become a born-again Christian by the time he came down.
Ben Folds – Army (live).mp3 (link fixed)

.

Alexi Murdoch – Four Songs

Maybe I’m cheating by including an EP comprising, as the title suggest, only four songs by Murdoch, who is usually compared to Nick Drake, and reasonable so. But those four songs are excellent; why dilute things with mediocre filler tracks? Having said that, Murdoch’s full debut album, 2006’s Time Without Consequence, turned out to be a consistently fine effort with few fillers. That album featured re-recordings of three of the songs on the EP (and those three also appear in re-recorded form on the recently released Away We Go soundtrack, which also recycles a heap of tracks from Time Without Consequence). From the EP, the moody Orange Sky received a fair amount of exposure on several TV shows and soundtracks — which we must not scorn; the licensing fees from TV shows, soundtracks and commercials feed many excellent musicians.
Alexi Murdoch – Blue Mind.mp3

.

Tift Merritt – Bramble Rose

Like soul music, country in the past decade or so has been molded and packaged to turn out generic, corporate slush headlined by the regrettable likes of Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. For the most part, it’s pop that is unconvincingly dressed up as country. The cowboy-hatted diehards may have recourse to perennial Grammy nominees such as Tim McGraw and Alan Jackson, or the bluegrass offerings of Alison Krauss or, lately, Dolly Parton. But beneath the surface of commercial prosperity, country remains vibrant.

Tift Merritt is one of those who work from a rich, venerable tradition without being compromised by the dictates of commercialism. Merritt’s quiet, melodious debut is the most traditional country of her three albums, with slide guitars and the sensibilities of such legends of the genre as Emmylou Harris or Jessi Colter (and, on the rockier songs, Linda Ronstadt) much in evidence. Her second album veered towards bluegrass, and the third album is more accomplished, but this is a very creditable debut.
Tift Merrit – Diamond Shoes.mp3

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Joseph Arthur – Redemption’s Son

The Indie singer-songwriter has not produced anything I like since 2004’s Our Shadows Still Remain, but the trio of that album, 2000’s Come To Where I’m From and Redemption’s Son should sustain me in those times when I require a Joseph Arthur fix (actually, I’ve sequenced my favourite tracks from those albums on my iPod). Arthur’s strength resides in his introspective lyrics, much on this set of a Christian bent (of the Sufjan Stevens variety, I hasten to add. The man has his fill of inner conflicts). Musically, he is eclectic and experimental, which is certainly commendable and perhaps expected of a Peter Gabriel protégé, though I can do without the kitchen sink production of some tracks. And the album is a few songs too long. But when it hits the sweet spot, it’s gorgeous.
Joseph Arthur – Honey And The Moon.mp3

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Josh Rouse – Under Cold Blue Stars

I know a venerable music journalist who’ll fling all review albums by anyone called Josh or Joshua (or, indeed, Ben) across the floor. It’s safe to say that the man is not a great fan of the often misunderstood and unjustly maligned singer-songwriter label. Still, I have a feeling he’d like Josh Ritter, though I’m not quite sure whether he would take to Josh Rouse. Certainly the music of this Josh would not conform to his expectation of a guitar strumming singer-songwriter. He might be surprised to hear a musician who creates appealing, intelligent pop numbers, many of which would not have been out of place on early Prefab Sprout albums. Under Cold Blue Stars is a fine album; if it was all Rouse would ever record, I’d regard it as a favourite. It was, however, followed by two outstanding albums, 1972 and Nashville. This set can’t compete with those (but it’s better than the two albums that came after those). I’ve had trouble deciding which song to feature, which is a mark of how good an album this is.
Josh Rouse – Feeling No Pain.mp3 (link fixed)

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Iron & Wine – The Creek Drank The Cradle

Sam Beam, for he is Iron & Wine, recorded the songs on this album, another debut on Sub Pop, as demos at his Florida home on four-track, and it very much sounds like it. Beam’s almost whispered vocals accompany very pretty but not necessarily memorable melodies. But it’s not that kind of album (whereas the follow-up, 2004’s Our Endless Numbered Days, had a few of those); you put it on to be immersed by a soothing and ultimately engaging atmosphere, aided by some astutely ambiguous lyrics. The deficiencies in sound quality make sense when Beam borrows from old country and bluegrass, as he does on An Angry Blade and The Rooster Moans, which one might well mistake for some old, lost Appalachian recordings. Indeed, the aural imperfections add to the set’s intimacy.
Iron & Wine – Upward Over The Mountain.mp3

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Counting Crows – Hard Candy

The early ’00s suffered from nostalgia trips by people who grew up in the ’90s: Ben Folds Five devotees who refuse to accept the Ben Folds One, Weezer fans who want Pinkerton perpetually recycled (and, to be fair, the latest Weezer album is awful), and Counting Crows devotees who need to compare every new Crows album to August And Everything After. The latter group was hard on Hard Candy. It may not be the (rather overrated) debut’s equal, but it certainly is more upbeat — and Duritz finally stops going on about the heartbreaking Elisabeth. Admittedly, Hard Candy includes some filler material, but this is the age of WinAmp which allows the listener to re-sequence albums (if only to avoid the ghastly American Girls). If some of the album is frustratingly disappointing, the other half comprises some of Counting Crows’ finest moments. Holiday In Spain is gorgeous, even if the album version is rendered entirely redundant by the gorgeous live version on the New Amsterdam album, which was recorded on the Hard Candy tour. Counting Crows have referenced The Band throughout their career; here their heroes get a namecheck by way of noting Richard Manuel’s death (even if The Band’s late, bearded singer serves only as a MacGuffin to a reflection on a relationship).
Counting Crows – If I Could Give All My Love (Or Richard Manuel Is Dead).mp3

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More Albums of the Year

Much is often said about guitarists, drummers, singers–about who the “greatest of all time” is or was, about who the “greatest” of the moment might be. But pianists are frequently overlooked, perhaps in part because there aren’t many truly excellent ones in popular music. It’s arguably easier and definitely less painful to pick out a melody on a piano than it is to master even the most basic chords on a guitar. Anyone who has strained to reach an F major chord on a guitar can appreciate the simplicity of the same chord on the piano. And anyone who has spent any amount of time at a piano can admire the dexterity involved in crafting a terrific solo, unexpected chord progression, signature style, etc., on the piano.

OH thinks it’s important to recognize the most skilled piano-playing artists of the moment. So here they are. This is not a list of all-time greats; it’s the movers and shakers of the present. Or, as Jerry Lee Lewis might say, the shake-rattle-and-rollers.

10. Trent Reznor
Surprised? Although Reznor is best known for grinding, distorted industrial rock and pissed off lyrics, he started out as a pianist. A prodigiously good one, so the story goes. For the most part, the world has yet to hear first hand these impressive piano skills that Reznor is rumored to have. Sure, he’ll tease us with a little keyboard melody here (Ghosts I, track 1), a handful of chords there (“March of the Pigs”), but we’ll have to keep waiting for the day when he unveils his more advanced abilities.

9. Alicia Keys
Classically trained (at least until she graduated high school at 16), Alicia Keys has an undeniably unique style of songwriting. Her songs mix blues with pop and hip-hop sensibilities, a combo that made her a chart-topping artist at age 20. Oh–and she sings well, too. Each of Keys’s tunes, if a bit repetitive in an R&B loop kind of way, reveal a soulfulness that has always sounded wise beyond the youthful years of their composer. (Embedding of this song was disabled. Otherwise, it would be posted here.)

8. Patrick Wolf
Precocious, a bit egotistical, and incredibly prolific, 26-year-old Wolf has released four albums in the past six years and has a fifth one slated for 2010. Stylistically, he’s all over the map; you could probably describe his songs in terms of music from just about any other era and not be too far off the mark. Roxy Music, Bowie, and even The Killers seem present and accounted for. If hearing The Killers in Wolf’s music implies he’s as heavily influenced as they are by better and more important bands of that past, so be it. At least Wolf is a better keyboardist than Brandon Flowers.

(For Patrick at the piano, go here. For cooler stuff, see below.)

7. Amanda Palmer
AFP (that’s “Amanda Fucking Palmer,” as she refers to herself) is nothing if not original. She has developed to perfection her trademark Kurt Weill-meets-Black Flag-meets-The Smiths aesthetic, turning her artistic identity into a sort of indie brand with an undyingly devoted cult following. As a musician, Palmer has progressed since The Dresden Dolls debuted in 2001 and continues to find odd ways of putting chords in succession while still somehow making musical sense. It’s unfortunate that she and drummer Brian Viglione have disbanded the Dolls: separately, they are interesting; together–live–they are extraordinary.

6. Matt Bellamy
He sings in a dramatic falsetto. He rips on the guitar. He composes orchestral arrangements on the recent The Resistance. He sings in a dramatic falsetto with a guitar slung over his shoulder while playing the piano in an orchestrally arranged song–live. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Matt Bellamy of Muse. Enough said.

5. Casey Dienel
At 24 years old, Dienel is the youngest musician on this list. After studying classical vocals and classical composition at the New England Conservatory of Music, Dienel dropped out–but her music hasn’t suffered for it. She released a solo album in 2006 and subsequently formed a band, White Hinterland, whose 2008 debut was grossly overlooked and under-reviewed. On Phylactory Factory, Dienel flirts in her high-pitched, girly voice with jazz piano riffs and deceptively light-hearted lyrics. Deceptive because this is seriously well-crafted music by a relative newcomer who clearly knows what she is doing. (Fun fact: White Hinterland released a more experimental EP, Lumiculaire, later in 2008. The lyrics are mostly in French. And it’s one of the best stoner albums of the year. Don’t quote me on that.)

Go here for “Dreaming of the Plum Trees”.

4. Tori Amos
Ok, I’ll be honest: I’m writing this from the point of view of someone who doesn’t listen much to Tori Amos but who respects her songwriting abilities, based mostly on hearsay and limited personal encounters. (Personal encounters with the music, that is. Not with Amos herself. For instance, I think “Spark” is a badass song. And Amos saw the beauty in “Smells Like Teen Spirit” before a lot of other people did.) I’ve heard concert accounts of her playing more than one piano simultaneously. I can’t deny that she’s a pianist force to be reckoned with, even if her lyrics are a bit overly serious for my tastes.

3. Regina Spektor
Regina Spektor’s music is quirky, anti-folk, unpretentious catchiness. And then she throws in something serious (like “Laughing With” from Far or a fantastic cover of Lennon’s “Real Love”) and punches you right in the gut. Her lyrics are playful and mysterious, creating Edward Gorey-like worlds with recurring themes. (The name “Mary Ann,” literary allusions, and multiple languages continually appear). See her live, and hear a rare phenomenon: a singer who sounds better in person than on a recording. And, as a pianist, she’s capable of more than her simple arrangements allow us to hear–she began playing the piano as a child and eventually studied at the Manhattan School of Music. Perhaps someday she’ll throw a little Rachmaninoff into her concert repertoire.

2. Rufus Wainwright
As if it’s not enough that he’s of a fine musical pedigree (son of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle), as though it’s not enough that most of his songs are glistening gems of lyrical and instrumental (and, yes, sometimes excessively theatrical) artisanship, Rufus Wainwright has now written an opera. In 2008, the Metropolitan Opera allegedly revoked Wainwright’s commission when the artist insisted on writing the libretto of Prima Donna in French instead of English. The Palace Theater of Manchester debuted the opera in July 2009. Prima Donna received mixed reviews at the Manchester International Festival, but nevertheless, OH is looking forward to seeing Rufus perform selections from the work at the New York City Opera on Thursday.

1. Ben Folds
His dork-rock style has lost some of its novelty, and his most recent solo album Way to Normal (and the fake pre-release version) and tour were disasters. But, you have only to listen to Ben Folds Five’s debut album from 1995 to understand why Folds tops this list. In a word: showmanship. Folds’s jazz/rock skillz are par excellence, but they’re also some of the most abusive in the biz. Fists, elbows, and feet are all fair game when it comes to body parts with which he’s willing to beat the piano. Folds is at his best best by himself or with a small band; the number of musicians and goofy visual distractions onstage made his last tour a ridiculous pseudo-hippie/college-pop hybrid. Strip away this camp and newfound psychedelia, and what you have is still the most impressive, improvisationally free pianist in rock right now.

- Alternates seamlessly between striped-down, moving piano ballads and rowdy, ridulous rocksongs, in both cases putting the cool back in piano, so that maybe one in a hundred kids might buy something other than a guitar?

- Ben, a multi-instrumentalist,  started playing piano at age nine, when his father bartered one for him off of a customer who couldn’t pay for something or other.

- Ben Folds was the first person to broadcast a live concert over MySpace. He pulled off a prank of a man falling off a balcony during “Jesusland.”

“Fred Jones Pt.2″ off Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001)

“Army” off The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (1999)

“Still Fighting It” off Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001)

This last week was wonderful.  I didn’t have to teach on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday…so instead I spent that time sleeping/hanging out with Alex/hanging out in Madison/going to see Ben Folds/etc.  Pretty much the best time ever.  But now, back to the grind…

I did manage to catch a few sessions of WMEA on Thursday and Friday, and the sessions I went to were amazing.  They reaffirmed that I wasn’t doing EVERYTHING wrong and also gave me a ton of great ideas for the future.  It was nice to actually hear someone speak about something that was applicable to my job specifically, instead of just generic “make sure you teach them good things and also talk about God,” which is mostly the advice and the pep talks that I accrue from faculty meetings, etc.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that; in fact, a lot of the talks I hear from my principal are really encouraging and nice to hear…but it was awesome to finally hear someone say “this is how you teach them mixed meter” or “this is how you get kids to stay in your strings program.”  Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Mixed meter, by the way, might very well be the bane of my existence.  It is my goal to NEVER EVER EVER EVER challenge my orchestra kids in that way.  Maybe I’m doing them a disservice by avoiding Stravinski-like pieces, but let’s be honest…  First of all, they’ll never go on to be college musicians, so it’s not like they’ll run into a lot of mixed meter in the future, and second of all, I HATE IT.  I honestly have a difficult enough time transitioning from 3/4 to 4/4, and the very thought of having to throw in something crazy like 7/8 or 5/2 causes me to break into a nervous sweat.  Sooo…yeah.  There’s that.

Anyway.  It also reaffirmed that I’m doing the right thing (theoretically) by challenging my high schoolers to become better overall musicians instead of just letting them eke by and providing crutches for them…even if that’s the quick fix at the time.  I hope to someday be able to hone that so that it’s something that happens automatically, instead of it being a constant battle.  I have yet to figure out how to accomplish that, but hey, it’s my first year.

Also, on a side note, read something about how it takes the average person SIXTEEN MONTHS to get over a divorce.  SIXTEEN MONTHS.  That’s over a year, for you mathematically challenged readers.  That’s a long time.  In a nutshell, I have no business dating Alex at all.  Awesome.  I’ve been looking for an out after the whole exclusivity talk last week, so maybe this is it.  Besides, it’s ridiculous to waste my time with guys like him when WE ALL KNOW who I’m waiting for.  Or maybe that’s what’s ridiculous.  Whatever.

Anyway, now it’s back to work tomorrow morning.  I can’t say the conference re-energized me, because I’m not looking forward to working a full week, but I am anxious to get my first orchestra concert under my belt.  I’m a little nervous about conducting in front of people.  I’m also nervous about how my kiddos will do.  I hope I can get everything together and prepared by the end of this week.  Mostly I just hope I don’t fall on my face (literally or figuratively).

Also, I dyed my hair.  We’ll see how that goes over with the kiddies.

Very occasionally a group of people get together on the Touchedmix blog and post mixes on a particular theme. Last week, the theme was HEADS, with their features and their functions. I thought readers of this little corner of the music blogosphere might be interested in the two mixes I banged together.

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OVER MY HEAD MIX
1. Aztec Camera – Head Is Happy (Heart’s Insane) (1985)
2. Crowded House – Pineapple Head (live) (1996/2006)
3. Johnny Cash – Mean Eyed Cat (1996)
4. The Dillards – I’ve Just Seen A Face (1968)
5. The Holmes Brothers – Smiling Face Hiding A Weeping Heart (2006)
6. Paul Anka – Eyes Without A Face (2006)
7. The Undisputed Truth – Smiling Faces Sometimes (1971)
8. Justine Washington – I Can’t Wait Until I See My Baby’s Face (1964)
9. The Flamingos – I Only Have Eyes For You (1959)
10. Mississippi Sheikhs – I’ve Got Blood in My Eyes For You (1938)
11. Robert Mitchum – Mama Looka Boo Boo (Shut Your Mouth-Go Away) (1958)
12. Emile Ford & the Checkmates – Them There Eyes (1960)
13. Lewis Taylor – Blue Eyes (2000)
14. Andrew Bird – A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left (2005)
15. Nada Surf – The Way You Wear Your Head (2002)
16. The Sweet – The Lies In Your Eyes (1975)
17. Ben Folds – Doctor My Eyes (2002)
18. Josh Ritter – One More Mouth (2006)
19. Kaki King – Saving Days In A Frozen Head (2008)
20. The Lilac Time – The Darkness Of Her Eyes (1991)
21. Thomas Dybdahl – Pale Green Eyes (2009)
22. Ryan Adams – Halloweenhead (2007)
23. The Cardigans – Give Me Your Eyes (2005)

Download

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Justine Washington is better known as Baby Washington; this is the original version of the song covered to good effect by Dusty Springfield.

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SENSES WORKING OVERTIME MIX
1. David Bowie – Can You Hear Me (1975)
2. Tim Buckley – I Can’t See You (1966)
3. Herman Düne – I Wish That I Could See You Soon (2006)
4. Devics – If We Cannot See (2006)
5. Richard Hawley – Can You Hear The Rain, Love (2001)
6. Scott Walker – You’re Gonna Hear From Me (1967)
7. The Righteous Brothers – See That Girl (1965)
8. Chris Montez – The More I See You (1966)
9. Cass Elliot – I’ll Be Seeing You (1973)
10. Blind Boy Fuller – What’s That Smells Like Fish (1938)
11. Smiley Lewis – I Hear You Knocking (1955)
12. The Supremes – I Hear A Symphony (1965)
13. Jim Messina – Seeing You (For The First Time) (1979)
14. Baby Huey – Listen To Me (1971)
15. The Jesus and Mary Chain – Taste Of Cindy (1985)
16. K’s Choice – A Sound That Only You Can Hear (1995)
17. Mull Historical Society – Watching Xanadu (2001)
18. Ron Sexsmith & Don Kerr – Listen (2005)
19. Rosanne Cash – I Was Watching You (2006)
20. The Magic Numbers – I See You, You See Me (2005)
21. Paul Anka – Smells Like Teen Spirit (2005)

DOWNLOAD

Here are some of the tunes I’ve recently added to my collection. Let the embarrassment begin.

• Tori Amos, “Somewhere over the Rainbow” — I posted a link to a video of her version of this song. It’s truly beautiful.
• Marc Anthony, “I Need to Know” — I don’t remember which car company used this song in a recent commercial; I just remember that I like the tune.  I can live without the lyrics, but I like the music.
• Spencer Davis Group, “Gimme Some Lovin’” — No, I’m not using this as a pick-up line. It’s just cool retro music.
• Ben Folds, “Kalamazoo” — I’ve gotta give some love to a song about the area where I live.
• Heart, “Alone” — You love the ’80s. You know you do.
• Jimi Hendrix, “The Star-Spangled Banner” — It’s a classic.
• Lady GaGa, “Poker Face” — This was the first song I heard after I finished the Detroit marathon.
• Alanis Morissette, “You Oughta Know” / “Your House” — I downloaded this more for the latter song than for the former; it’s a really cool, really sad song.
• Katy Perry, “Waking up in Vegas” — It’s catchy; therefore, I like it.
• Merrilee Rush and the Turnabouts, “Angel of the Morning” — It’s one of my favorite hits by a one-hit wonder.
• Styx, “Renegade” — It’s a classic.
• Super Mario Bros. theme — You know you love it.
• t.A.T.u., “All the Things She Said” — What’s better than catchy music? Catchy Russian music.

On October 20.2009 Ben Folds and the Seattle Symphony played the famous Benaroya Hall in Seattle.   As Ben Folds walked out to greet the crowd it was evident that the crowd wasn’t the normal audience that Folds was used to seeing.  The Benaroya crowd was obviously a mixture of suit wearing subscription people and the awesome Folds crazy jean wearing fans.  As Folds walked out on the stage half of the crowd applauded while the other half were screaming “ROCK THIS BITCH”.  The set opened and breezed through the first few songs, and then folds stopped and start telling stories about hippies, angry mothers, the economy, and overdoses.  Behind Ben Folds was the Seattle Symphony, which is one of the best and most well known symphonies in the country, and they were as always overly amazing.  This concert brought out my inner band geek once again and left my ears quite satisfied.  Ben Folds set was about 30 songs in length, some of the stand out tracks were “Cologne”,”Not the Same”, “Landed”,  ”Brick”, and “Narcolepsy”.  Narcolepsy was and is and will forever be the standout moment of this concert.  While every song was amazing “Narcolepsy” was just monumentally breathtaking with harmonies between Folds and the opera singers resonating and reaching every corner of the room.  After the set was completed Folds came out and played a solo set for the people, and by people I mean the jean wearing portion of the crowd.  As Folds played through “Rockin the Suburbs” and “Army” the crowd celebrated an amazing night at the classy Benaroya Hall.

Below is a picture from the first time my wife and I ever hung out.

She dug me despite of (or totally because of) my bitching Lincoln beard. (Photo by Elizabeth Rauf)

She was new in town. I was unemployed and making a mess of my life. So I invited her to a party, and we…hit it off.

So WTF does this have to do with Ben Folds? “The Luckiest.”

The song is pretty much my life up until the point that I met my wife, and afterward.

From the song:

I don’t get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
Brought me here

And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it everyday
And I know

That I am
…
The luckiest

I’d seen all the bullshit of the dating world so many times that I sort of (not even a little) knew the bad paths to avoid. And yet, those same bad paths that I always managed to wonder down again, and again, and again…made me the kind of guy I was when I met Alisia. It’s a pretty beautiful juxtaposition, if you ask me.  “The Luckiest” is our song. We’ve sung it on road trips. Had a few romantic moments set to its sound. My friend Ian even played it on guitar as Alisia walked down the aisle. So we dig it.

And it’s an especially cool track since the other night (October 21) Ben Folds played the song for us. There were hundreds of other people in the Wilma, but he played it for us.

Sitting with our friends Adam, Malia and Tom Fite of Tomfite.com, Pabst in one hand and Cold Smoke in the other, I got a little bored wondering what Ben Folds would play. Will he play “Army”? Yeah, probably. “Rockin’ the Suburbs” is probably going to happen. But what else? I decided to take a chance and see if I could make a request.

Adam, Malia, and Tom Fite of tomfite.com before the Ben Folds show Oct. 21.

First off, Twitter rocks. I love it. I tweet too much (as evidence to your right). I saw Tom texting to Twitter while we waited and I got an idea: Send a tweet to Ben Folds.

From my Twitter feed: “@benjaminfolds We have some requests, ‘Song for the dumped,’ and ‘The luckiest.’ We like dichotomy down here in the 2nd row.” Actually, the first time I spelled his name wrong and had Adam not seen my “@benjamingfolds” gaff, he would not have got my requests.

Luckily (or maybe due to boredom) Ben Folds was checking Twitter and saw this.

I of course was unaware.

So, remember those two beers? Beer runs through me like a river through “it.” After the first few songs of the set I leaned over and told my wife, “I’ve got to pee. I’ll take some balcony photos.” She nodded and handed me her point-and-shoot.

a bit later, upstairs in the Wilma’s bathroom I finished up and headed over to wash my hands. As soon as the water hit my fingers I heard what sounded like “otomy” and “second row.” I reached for the soap and then I heard it…the opening chords. Shit, I think, I’m up here with wet hands while my wife is down there listening to our song. Must get there before our song becomes D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

I take off running, wiping my hands on my shirt as I go, jumping down the stairs and pushing folks aside like I’m at some punk rock show. Alisia and everyone breathes a sigh of relief when I hit the second row. I grab hold of the wife and she starts to cry a little against my shoulder. It’s all very moving. One of our favorite musicians is playing our song, live, for us.

But how the hell did we know it was played for us?

Mr. Folds introduced the song by saying that he’d received a few requests, but that one stood out because “the fans in the second row like dichotomy. Dichotomy is a nice word; it’s got four syllables. But I don’t know if I can play their requests though because it’s not two-for-Tuesdays. I don’t know. I guess we can call it ‘Wet-tshirt-Wednesday” so we’ve got some reason.”

Then he jumped into it.

Sadly this footage from that night starts after his dedication.

When he finished up he told us how he hadn’t played “Song for the Dumped” in years and would make plenty of mistakes. And he did. He made four. But the audience was really into it and we all kept singing and laughing, and having a generally good time. The best part is that the five of us now have this story of Ben Folds dedicating songs to us, which is special–especially for Alisia and I.

Since then I’ve been sick, which is a bummer. And that’s why it’s taken long for this post.

I was very pleased that the first post in this series of my personal top 10 albums for every year of the outgoing decade (depending how you count decades, of course) created such a positive and generous response. Thank you for all the comments; they are always appreciated. I should point out again that I can include only those albums I actually have and know well. So Gillian Welch’s The Revelator fails to make the cut, though I believe that those of my friends who argue for its brilliance might have a point.

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Ben Folds – Rockin’ The Suburbs

The are at least two types of Ben Folds fans: those who don’t think that Folds has ever topped the work he did in union with with Robert Sledge and Darren Jessee as the ironically named Ben Folds Five, and those who prefer his more mature solo output. Put me down as belonging in the latter group. While the very funny title track, the driving Zak And Sara, Annie Waits or Not The Same would fit snugly in the Ben Folds Five canon, Folds’ solo debut exhibited a greater empathy for the subjects of his lyrics. On Rockin’ The Suburbs (released on September 11), Folds took the baton from BFF songs such as Brick, Don’t Change Your Plans or Best Imitation Of Myself, musically and lyrically.

Folds is a wonderful story teller. The story of Fred Jones, the old newspaper man whose retirement is going barely noticed by “all of those bastards” who don’t even remember his first name, is particularly poignant. Indeed, throughout the album Folds moves the listener: in the father-and-son relationship of Still Fighting It, in the desperation of the guy still trying to get over a girl in Gone (“the chemicals are wearing off…”), or in the tenderness of the astonishing love declarations on The Luckiest (one of the greatest love songs ever written; alas Folds has since divorced the song’s addressee). The album is not flawless — there is a weak trio of successive tracks in the middle) — but it does suggest that Ben Folds is this generation’s Randy Newman. And that is high praise.
Ben Folds – Fred Jones Part 2.mp3
Ben Folds – Zak And Sara.mp3

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Hedwig and the Angry Inch Soundtrack

The first time I saw the Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I was gobsmacked. The curious storyline, the intense performances, the incongruous humour (black GIs in East Berlin!), the imaginative setpieces, the animation and costumes, and, above all, the fantastic music, written by Stephen Trask and performed mostly by John Cameron Mitchell as the genitally mutilated Hedwig, which ranges from ballads and punk to Ziggy-style glam rock.

The highlight of the film is the Wig In A Box setpiece, also the soundtrack’s most appealing track. Since I am urging those who have not seen the film to catch up with it, I’ll restrain myself from describing the scene. I expect that many viewers will want to see it repeatedly. I’ll limit myself to posting only one song from each album here (apart from the #1 album of the year), but I also might have posted the gorgeous The Origin Of Love, with its Aristophanes-inspired lyrics, or Wicked Little Town, or Midnight Radio, or the explosive Angry Inch…
Hedwig and the Angry Inch – Wig In A Box.mp3

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Judith Sephuma – A Cry, A Smile, A Dance

Before the Idols franchise spewed forth disposable singers of debatable ability, at least in South Africa, televised talent shows in the country brought several artists of notable aptitude to the public’s attention. One of these was Judith Sephuma, born in the northern town of Polokwane (then Pietersburg) and a music graduate from the University of Cape Town. Her 2001 debut album is a captivating blend of jazz and Afro-pop which fully met, and even exceeded, the expectations observers had invested in the artist since her performance at the inauguration of President Thabo Mbeki in 1999, a year before she made a huge impression at the misnamed North Sea Jazz Festival in Cape Town (the local equivalent of the Montreaux festival). If the wonderful Randy Crawford had been South African, this is what she might have sounded like.
Judith Sephuma – Mmangwane.mp3

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Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions – Bavarian Fruit Bread

Much as I love Sandoval’s group Mazzy Starr, I struggled long and hard to “get” this album. It’s the sort of ambient set one needs to be in a perfect mood for (perhaps when one is recovering from a bout of inebriation). But when everything is set, it hits home in its quiet way. If Sandoval sounds fragile on Mazzy Starr, here you want to pack her in cotton wool and keep the volume low, just in case she breaks. The result is exponentially mesmerising and ultimately gorgeous. It’s not the sort of album from which one can pick a representative track (though I’ll try here); it works best as a body of music. If one is in the mood.
Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions – Around My Smile.mp3

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Richard Hawley – Late Night Final

Last month Hawley released a masterpiece, Truelove Gutter. Without wishing to resort to hyperbole, I’ll claim with confidence that it is not only the best album of the year, but one of the best of the decade. Hawley, a former member of Britpop groups Longpigs and Pulp, has produced a series of delightful and always affecting albums that started with his full debut, Late Night Final (it was preceded by a self-titled EP in 2000). The gorgeously melancholy, late night mood of that great triptych of Hawley albums — Coles Corner, Lady’s Bridge, Truelove Gutter — is already evident here. His voice has now dropped a register and the arrangements have become more intricate since Late Night Final (on which Hawley’s country influence is still evident), but the basics of the Hawley sound, and the quality, are already there. The stand-out track is Baby, You’re My Light, which I featured on this mix (which also features Ben Folds’ The Luckiest).
Richard Hawley – Love Of My Life.mp3

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Death Cab For Cutie – The Photo Album

Death Cab For Cutie is one the most stupid band names in modern music. It evokes the image of shouting and wailing nu-metal emo types, or perhaps a death metal outfit that failed in conjuring a suitably satanic-sounding moniker. Death Cab are nothing of the sort, of course, nor do they deserve to be dismissed for featuring so prominently on the teen drama-soap The O.C. (which was actually quite good for a couple of seasons and featured some excellent music that otherwise would not have received wider exposure). The Photo Album is Death Cab’s transition album, still drawing from the Indie rock of the earlier albums but preparing for the almost symphonic feel of 2003’s Transatlanticism and last year’s Narrow Stairs. It lacks the diversity of 2005’s Plans, but like Plans and more than Transatlanticism, it does have tracks that stand on their own. This is solidly guitar-driven, ambient Indie rock, but more accomplished (or, purists might say, polished) than the four preceding Death Cab albums.
Death Cab For Cutie – I Was A Kaleidoscope.mp3

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Rilo Kiley – Take-Offs & Landings

In 2004, Rilo Kiley released a brilliant album in More Adventurous. The preceding two albums are more patchy. Take-Offs & Landings borrows its influences widely, blows some alt.country over it, and voila. Sometimes it works, and there is nothing here that is really objectionable, but this is very much the work of a group still finding its way. Likewise, the wonderful Jenny Lewis is still discovering her voice, which here is still banking on its cuteness before it became the sexiest voice since Julie London’s. If all this sounds half-hearted, then that is not quite fair on an enjoyable album. It suffers not on its own merits, but in comparison to what the group and Lewis as a solo artist produced later.
Rilo Kiley – Plane Crash In C.mp3

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Alicia Keys – Songs In A Minor

At a time when soul music is dying a gangrened death at the hands of dancing corporate muppets and sexless nasal whiners, we ought to be grateful for the few artists who still refer to the rich heritage of the genre. So I find it difficult to sympathise with those who dismiss the artistry of Alicia Keys. OK, she’s not quite all that which the hype claims her to be, as a pianist or as a singer. Much of her material is bland. It’s safe to say that she cannot compare with, say, Roberta Flack. Judging only from her appearances at the Grammys (which I still watch for reasons I cannot comprehend; probably only for the In Memoriam section), I find her a bit smug, a bit corporate, a bit too convinced of her own genius. And yet, her albums includes a clutch of tracks which, had they been recorded 35 years earlier, would be noted as fine contributions to the canon of soul music, celebrating the derivations of her material as reflecting an astute choice of influences. Despite all the caveats I have raised, I’m glad that Alicia Keys is around.
Alicia Keys – A Woman’s Worth

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The Shins – Oh, Inverted World

Playing the song New Slang from this album, Natalie Portman’s character in the fine film Garden State promises Zach Braff’s protagonist that it will change his life. Without wishing to spring spoilers upon the reader who unaccountably have not seen the film, it indeed does so. The Portland, Oregon-based band’s debut thus broke out from the ghetto of Indie cult on the back of Braff’s championing. If the Kinks had been Americans recording their music in the ’00s, this is what they might have sounded like. I have quite enjoyed The Shins’ subsequent albums, which are musically accomplished, perhaps more than Oh, Inverted World. But if I want a fix of The Shins, it’s the debut I turn to.
The Shins – One By One All Day.mp3

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Weezer – Green Album

What is it with all those people who are so quick to dismiss every Weezer album because it isn’t Pinkerton? It seems to be accepted wisdom that Pinkerton, one of the great albums of the 1990s, set some kind of standard that Rivers Cuomo and the other three chaps must live up to. The trouble is, by the time the Pinkerton evangelists listened to the other Weezer albums, they were no longer of an age when they locked themselves in their bedrooms because school and parents and jocks sucked and listened to Pinkerton in the recovery period between wanks. The Green Album is a fine album; it has some great tunes, it’s fun, it doesn’t challenge you; it does everything you’d want from a Weezer album. Island In The Sun is my cellphone ringtone, by the way.
Weezer – Island In The Sun.mp3

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More Albums of the Year