Last week I fell back in love with music. I was listening to the podcast of NPR’s All Songs Considered from two weeks ago – which opened with “Do You Realize?” by the Flaming Lips then going to “Stan” by Eminem – and the host and three of the show’s producers were trying to sum up the last decade of music, which mostly meant they joked about how they couldn’t. They dissected the ways MP3s, the shuffle feature on iPods, and YouTube had fundamentally altered how we experience music. They voiced nostalgia for record stores and mix tapes. They demonstrated how hip-hop transfused itself into so many styles. They acknowledged the importance of the “O Brother, Where Art Though?” soundtrack. They said Sufjan Stevens was disappointing, in a heartbreaking, where-have-you-gone sort of way, and played “Casimir Pulaski Day,” maybe my favorite song of the decade. Ultimately they agreed this was music’s best ten years ever.
More than anything, though, they made me giddy about music again. Since college, my music choices have stultified. I worry it portends crotchetiness to come. While I still find new bands and sounds, what used to be a life altering discovery every month or week morphed into one just every so often. Part of this, without my realizing it, has been a rejection of buying music online, which is tied to my general internet frustration. (I should have been born in the 1930s with Gay Talese for a name.) As a writer, I place great weight on lyrics and word play: That’s why folk singers like Damien Jurado hold my heart though their guitar playing rarely makes me soar. The problem with buying some zeros and ones is you don’t get a lyric sheet with gorgeous drawings and layout, so though David Bazan sings, “This brown liquor whets my tongue,” you hear “wets,” and the message and the power dies. Just compounding the problem: At the same time physical albums became nonsense, I’ve become a poor twenty-something who can’t buy ten albums a month. It’s a double-wammy to music discovery, which, indirectly, is a knock, not hyperbolically, to my soul.
But this show might have changed that. It ended with a song by Arcade Fire, a band I’ve known about but for some reason ignored, probably through a combination of indie-hype avoidance and if-it’s-on-the-radio-I-don’t-listen-to-it snobbery. The track was great, and it capped an uplifting hour listening to people talk about their love of songs for. Maybe that’s what I’ve missed since college, maybe that’s what’s made me lose my music-hunting instinct: I’ve misplaced that communal gathering around song.
So in the spirit of hoping that the next decade will be better than the last, and that the musical joy I brought with me into the last decade will come along into the next, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite albums from the 2000s. And to rekindle that community of song I want back, I’ve asked friends to put in their own lists and to ask their friends to add theirs. The lists’ criterion is up to each person. It can be favorites, or best, or most important, or single-genre, as long as they’re albums released since 2000. If you want yours up, send me an e-mail and I’ll post it for posterity.
I hope you enjoy reading them, but mostly I hope you take the lists as recommendations, search out this music, and fall into the music. (Album title first, then artist.)
My List
1. Come On And Feel The Illinoise! - Sufjan Stevens
2. Toxicity - System Of A Down
3. White Blood Cells - The White Stripes
4. Ghost Of David - Damien Jurado
5. A Grand Don’t Come For Free - The Streets
6. Curse Your Branches - David Bazan
7. …As The Eternal Cowboy - Against Me!
8. Quality - Talib Qweli
9. Takk - Sigur Ross
10. Relationship Of Command - At The Drive-In
Beau Bailey
1. Toxicity - System of a Down
2. Elephant - White Stripes
3. Rooty - Basement Jaxx
4. Miss Machine - Dillinger Escape Plan
5. Demon Days - Gorillaz
6. Reroute to Remain - In Flames
7. Marshal Mathers LP - Eminem
8. Searching For A Former Clairy - Against Me!
9. Self-Titled - Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards
10. Dog Problems - The Format
Shane Knox
1. The Way Up - Pat Metheny Group
2. Quartet - Metheny Mehldau
3. Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust - Sigur Ros
4. Perceptual - Brian Blade Fellowship
5. Dear John - Loney Dear
6. Radiance Keith - Jarrett
7. Speaking of Now - Pat Metheny Group
8. Art of Trio Volume 5: Progression - Brad Mehldau
9. Elegiac Cycle - Brad Mehldau
10. Soviet Kitch - Regina Spektor
Bill Oram (with explanations!)
1. American IV: The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash, 2002: Mostly covers by one of the most-covered artists ever. "Hurt' gets the pub, but "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and "I Hung My Head" make this somber album a fitting farewell to Cash, as well as the my best album of the decade.
2. The Long Way Around - Dixie Chicks, 2006 -- Triumphant return of shunned group who remained unapologetic for standing up agains the Iraq War, as evidenced by "Not Ready to Make Nice."
3. Stay Positive - The Hold Steady, 2008 -- Lord, I'm Discouraged might be one of my favorite all-time songs, and is complemented nicely by stand-out tradition alt-rock.
4. Soul Caddy - Cherry Poppin' Daddies, 2000 -- The fact that it sells for $.99 on Amazon is proof that nobody loves this album like I do.
5. American Idiot - Green Day, 2004 -- Ironically smart rock opera that asked a lot of questions about our society people weren't asking yet.
6. Genius Loves Company - Ray Charles, 2004 -- Yeah, maybe Norah Jones stole the show, but it's still the best "duets" album ever.
7. Graduation - Kanye West, 2007 -- Only rap album I've ever liked. Sharp missives buffer sentimental coming-of-age rap ballads.
8. Put the "O" Back in Country - Shooter Jennings, 2005 -- You come for "4th of July" you stay for the grungy, bitter rockabilly narratives. Money line: " Well, my old girl was a cadillac/She was long and sleek and dressed in black/But I caught her cruisin' with another dude/So I shot 'em down with my blue .22." (from "Daddy's Farm")
9. Love Is Hell - Ryan Adams, 2004 -- Listen to the Wonderwall cover.
10. Chicago (the soundtrack) - Various, 2002 -- Crashed my mom's car listening to Cell Block Tango.
Daniel Torres
1. Involver - Sasha
2. Black Sails in the Sunset - AFI
3. Miss Machine - Dillinger Escape Plan
4. Live From Stubbs - Matisyahu
5. Far - Regina Spektor
6. Speak for Yourself - Imogen Heap
7. Deja Entendu - Brand New
8. Gutter Phenomenon - Every Time I Die
9. Tear from the Red - Poison the Well
10. Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses - Atreyu
Monday, November 23, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Party's Over, The CD's Skippin'
Either the final meal of my adolescence was cow tongue tacos with onion and cilantro at two in the morning or it was home-made braised pork butt, collared greens, baked beans, and dill, cheddar cornbread at eight p.m. And the final party of my adolescence included either twelve beers, four cigarettes, one wood-tipped Swisher Sweet, a funky couch, and a moldy blanket or two six-dollar beers, two glasses of 18-year-old Scotch, my bed, and the smell of my girlfriend’s hair. And either I was wasted or I was sober. And either I told adolescence to die or I grasped at it. Either way, at twenty-five my last bit of adolescence vanished. I guess that makes me a man.
This final stripping of teenageness surprised me, mostly because I thought it had already happened. I entered adulthood several years ago – graduating from college, struggling with debt, working a real job, eventually moving in with my girlfriend – and I was the vanguard among my friends. One went to graduate school, postponing real life. Another ran away from a diagnosed psychotic girlfriend, never did deal cards professionally in Vegas, and then moved toward adulthood by training to become a firefighter and EMT. A third head-faked at the idea, engaging some girl two months after returning from his mission then calling it off. I didn’t look down on them. They let me shuffle into manhood while keeping a finger on the wall of childhood, and no one, including me, could call me out.
It’s a popular role. This Peter Pan syndrome is now so celebrated in America (see: every Judd Apatow movie, or don’t) that Hemingway’s adolescent-men, those Americans mocked by somehow more mature Europeans, seem almost hyper-masculine. I was a man acting, and believing, like I didn’t enjoy playing a boy’s game. The problem was my friends were finishing the game and I couldn’t keep my hand on the wall and stretch any farther.
The first sign of dissonance came a year ago when my friend got engaged for real. Three months after meeting her, they married, their families demanding offspring before congratulating them. Three months later, they were expecting. It was big, I wasn’t alone in adulthood anymore, but it didn’t foster any realizations. It was later, about the time his son was born, that two things clarified my dilemma: One, I learned my best friend, the grad student, was being flown to Montana for a job interview; two, I was outside the age group swine flu was killing. Before this, I was comfortably a twenty-something. Then that virus newly divided the world. There where those it liked to kill – infants to twenty-five-year-olds – and those it didn’t – the rest of us. Mortality-wise, my girlfriend was grouped with the newborn and I was with my grandparents. That’s hard to take when your drinking buddy is moving three big, western states away.
I had these things on my mind the first night of the last two nights of my adolescence.
By the time I reached Corvallis, Oregon State University’s home, the Beavers had lost, again, and I was the only sober person in town. The house two of my friends rented resembled the frat in Animal House, but crappier. No outlets worked on the main floor, so extension cords snaked downstairs and around the floor, connecting to TVs, computers, game consoles, stereos, but not the fridge, which belched a hellish stench whenever a new partygoer looked for beer. The party matched: the sticky kitchen floor; the vodka shots; being told water’s for pussies; that same guy puking in the kitchen sink then saying second wind, baby, second wind, as the host unstopped the drain; the near brawls; the distillation of every college house party I’d ever staggered through. I was in the party but apart from it, watching from corners, looking down.
Somehow the house cleared of everyone but me and my two friends, and we salvaged the night with tongue tacos from the nearby taqueria. Driving home to my girlfriend late the next morning felt like an escape from the house, from college past, from a younger, drunker, louder, dumber, me. I felt so much older, in that way a college student visiting his old high school does. It felt good.
My friend got the job, so a month later my girlfriend and I hosted a party. An adult party. A party with great food. A snottily select party. A throw-up free party. I can remember all of it, and it was great, sort of. This was the last time my best friend and I would hang out for a long time, and, because most of my post-high school friends were his friends at his college, it might be the last time I would hang out with the whole group, so I didn’t want a dinner party. I wanted a wake. I wanted to get smashed, tell old stories in old ways, crank up the punk rock and sing a blubbering chorus of “Pints of Guinness Make You Stronger,” the saddest song ever recorded.
We did none of that. We stayed up late, we had good, bond-building conversations, we realized this wasn’t a last-ever party. But when I went to bed I felt like a neutered dog or, even better, like the last drop of adolescence had been wrung from me. It hurt.
I wanted it back. Even though I’d kissed it off a month earlier, I wanted that boorish, unfettered self back. At least, I wanted access to him, to don that costume at the right times. I didn’t, and I don’t, want to re-become that person. The getup is funny for about five hours. Any longer and you look ridiculous.
Why the hold then? Why the nostalgia when I can quantify how much better life is now? Even as I type I run through the yearning-to-mockery cycle over and over. Remember the greatness of your study abroad? Yeah, the drunkest year of your life. College was fun, especially living with inconsiderate jerks and eating rice every day. This is growing up, I get that, and growing up is really just a series of funerals for your former selves. This is the self that just doesn’t die as easily. It’s as annoying and brash and indestructible and selfish as a teenager, as the kid I was.
This final stripping of teenageness surprised me, mostly because I thought it had already happened. I entered adulthood several years ago – graduating from college, struggling with debt, working a real job, eventually moving in with my girlfriend – and I was the vanguard among my friends. One went to graduate school, postponing real life. Another ran away from a diagnosed psychotic girlfriend, never did deal cards professionally in Vegas, and then moved toward adulthood by training to become a firefighter and EMT. A third head-faked at the idea, engaging some girl two months after returning from his mission then calling it off. I didn’t look down on them. They let me shuffle into manhood while keeping a finger on the wall of childhood, and no one, including me, could call me out.
It’s a popular role. This Peter Pan syndrome is now so celebrated in America (see: every Judd Apatow movie, or don’t) that Hemingway’s adolescent-men, those Americans mocked by somehow more mature Europeans, seem almost hyper-masculine. I was a man acting, and believing, like I didn’t enjoy playing a boy’s game. The problem was my friends were finishing the game and I couldn’t keep my hand on the wall and stretch any farther.
The first sign of dissonance came a year ago when my friend got engaged for real. Three months after meeting her, they married, their families demanding offspring before congratulating them. Three months later, they were expecting. It was big, I wasn’t alone in adulthood anymore, but it didn’t foster any realizations. It was later, about the time his son was born, that two things clarified my dilemma: One, I learned my best friend, the grad student, was being flown to Montana for a job interview; two, I was outside the age group swine flu was killing. Before this, I was comfortably a twenty-something. Then that virus newly divided the world. There where those it liked to kill – infants to twenty-five-year-olds – and those it didn’t – the rest of us. Mortality-wise, my girlfriend was grouped with the newborn and I was with my grandparents. That’s hard to take when your drinking buddy is moving three big, western states away.
I had these things on my mind the first night of the last two nights of my adolescence.
By the time I reached Corvallis, Oregon State University’s home, the Beavers had lost, again, and I was the only sober person in town. The house two of my friends rented resembled the frat in Animal House, but crappier. No outlets worked on the main floor, so extension cords snaked downstairs and around the floor, connecting to TVs, computers, game consoles, stereos, but not the fridge, which belched a hellish stench whenever a new partygoer looked for beer. The party matched: the sticky kitchen floor; the vodka shots; being told water’s for pussies; that same guy puking in the kitchen sink then saying second wind, baby, second wind, as the host unstopped the drain; the near brawls; the distillation of every college house party I’d ever staggered through. I was in the party but apart from it, watching from corners, looking down.
Somehow the house cleared of everyone but me and my two friends, and we salvaged the night with tongue tacos from the nearby taqueria. Driving home to my girlfriend late the next morning felt like an escape from the house, from college past, from a younger, drunker, louder, dumber, me. I felt so much older, in that way a college student visiting his old high school does. It felt good.
My friend got the job, so a month later my girlfriend and I hosted a party. An adult party. A party with great food. A snottily select party. A throw-up free party. I can remember all of it, and it was great, sort of. This was the last time my best friend and I would hang out for a long time, and, because most of my post-high school friends were his friends at his college, it might be the last time I would hang out with the whole group, so I didn’t want a dinner party. I wanted a wake. I wanted to get smashed, tell old stories in old ways, crank up the punk rock and sing a blubbering chorus of “Pints of Guinness Make You Stronger,” the saddest song ever recorded.
We did none of that. We stayed up late, we had good, bond-building conversations, we realized this wasn’t a last-ever party. But when I went to bed I felt like a neutered dog or, even better, like the last drop of adolescence had been wrung from me. It hurt.
I wanted it back. Even though I’d kissed it off a month earlier, I wanted that boorish, unfettered self back. At least, I wanted access to him, to don that costume at the right times. I didn’t, and I don’t, want to re-become that person. The getup is funny for about five hours. Any longer and you look ridiculous.
Why the hold then? Why the nostalgia when I can quantify how much better life is now? Even as I type I run through the yearning-to-mockery cycle over and over. Remember the greatness of your study abroad? Yeah, the drunkest year of your life. College was fun, especially living with inconsiderate jerks and eating rice every day. This is growing up, I get that, and growing up is really just a series of funerals for your former selves. This is the self that just doesn’t die as easily. It’s as annoying and brash and indestructible and selfish as a teenager, as the kid I was.
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