The Music Box.
Entries about the music I like.
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Dropped on September 18, 2001, in an America deeply embroiled in that nation’s largest collective post-war trauma, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtot became an accidental synecdoche. Sonically, the album captured something of the upheaval and incongruity of that era in the history of America and the world, while lyrically striking a tone of surreal apathy.
Mclusky – Mclusky Do Dallas
The components of a Mclusky track are simple: Falco’s shout-singing, supported by his hooky guitar and John Chapple’s crunchy, riffy bass, both distorted to the max, backed by Jack Egglestone’s four-bar metronomic battering of studio drums recorded in the natural, live-sound style of Steve Albini. Music like this is cathartic, a strange sort of meditation.
Jawbreaker – 24 Hour Revenge Therapy
It is a little over the top perhaps, but when I first heard Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, I was instantly hooked. I was in my early twenties, either just graduating college or already dealing with issues of a grown-up life like rent and utilities and bills. But the record – and Bivouac before it – struck a chord somewhere deep within my core.
Disco Inferno – The 5 EPs
Music like the 5 EPs triggers an oddly specific sense of nostalgia for no obvious reason. I didn’t grow up listening to experimental alt-rock by a band that attached MIDI triggers to their instruments, triggering evolving samples with each strum, with each snare hit. In fact, the vocabulary of this sort of music would’ve seemed completely alien to me in the mid-90s.
Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden
When it comes to pinpointing its origin, post-rock historians tend to identify most with one of three sources: Bark Psychosis’s 1994 album, Hex, Slint’s 1991 album, Spiderland, and Talk Talk’s 1988 album, Spirit of Eden. Ignore the chronology here, if you can; after all, we’re not simply trying to identify the first of three records generally considered post-rock.
My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
My Bloody Valentine's Loveless may not be my favourite album, but it's close to the top. Bilinda Butcher’s may not be my favourite lead vocal performance of all time, but it’s pretty close to the top. In fact, Kevin Shields’s vocal takes on Sometimes and Soon are among the only ones I can think of that come close. His guitarwork in this album is the best I’ve ever heard.
Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream
From my 16th birthday to my 18th, I listened to Geek U.S.A. about thrice as often as my second most frequently heard song (I think it was either the Beatles’ A Day In The Life or the Cure’s A Forest). I’d scroll down to number fifty-something (54, I think?) on a playlist named ‘the greatest guitar solos of all time – hq’ and there it’d be: 'Smashing Pumpkins – Geek U.S.A.'
The Cure — Disintegration
Through most of Disintegration, the Cure wallows in a gentle midtempo; Thompson’s guitar does more repeating than noodling, Gallup’s bass rumbles patterns that are reminiscent of early Joy Division, and O’Donnell’s synths add an orchestral sparkle that has since become a staple of goth. Drones and esoteric keys handled by Smith and Thompson crackle and pop for effect.
A. R. Rahman — Roja
It’s hard to believe that the Roja soundtrack was a debut album, and that its composer, A.R. Rahman was only 25 when it was released. Since I was barely conscious when Roja was released into a world that had heard nothing like it, I have no first-hand experience of just how bewildering the new sound was for those who bought close to 3 million copies of the album.
Cake — Comfort Eagle
I suspect there’s a certain type of nostalgia-prone socially anxious everteen who gravitates to Cake’s music. There’s a certain type of person who finds kinship in Vince DiFiore’s trumpet and John McCrea’s sardonic speak-singing. It takes a certain kind of person to argue, absent irony, that the greatest cover song ever recorded is Cake’s version of I Will Survive, even when faced with well-made arguments and protestations.
Courtney Barnett — Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit
As Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit winds down, you walk through them in a daze. As you take another round before going back home, you listen to the album again — that rare looped album — and you think, man, I don’t think I’m ever going to forget the first time I heard this album. Like Velvet Underground & Nico alone at night in your room, or Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat one languid afternoon.
Nas — Illmatic
In many ways, Illmatic is peerless. In it, the then 20-year-old Nas is a storyteller without equal, showing you through a clear window pastiches of a world you would have never otherwise seen. He does this against the backdrop of the best work of hip-hop’s best producers: DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, Q-Tip (from ATCQ), and L.E.S. It’s a veritable who’s who of the greatest beatmakers of the east coast punctuating Nas’s images of urban decay with spare jazz-influenced boom-bap beats.
Boards of Canada — Geogaddi
Boards of Canada are among the best at what they do, which is making smoky downtempo electronica. Geogaddi is widely considered their second best album, which is saying a lot, considering their best is widely considered to be Music Has The Right Children, often spoken of in glowing terms in relation not only to electronic music, but also to all of western popular music. But there’s something about the range of Geogaddi that makes it my favourite Boards Of Canada album.
Jon Hopkins — Immunity
Usually when you can't finish an album it's indicative of its failings. But in rare cases, it's indicative of a greatness that compels you to behave like some sort of character from a movie: hold your head in your hands, sink to your knees, stare at the sky, shake your head in disbelief, whisper wow through teary eyes. That's what happens with Immunity.
Burial — Untrue
If you, like me, see the city night as a human emotion, no work of art better encapsulates it than Burial's Untrue. Musically, it's easy to name its constituent parts: part UK garage, part broken beats, part glitchy atmosphere, part time-stretched vocal samples, part reverb-drenched masters. But there's something magical that makes it a lot greater than the sum of its parts.